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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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PEESE1TTED ■ ZB"ST 



UNITED STATES OP AMERICA. 



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SOME ODDS AND ENDS 



OF 



PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE. 






Dear Sir.: 

So many have written to me with respect to the mat- 
ters of which you speak, that I have concluded to print 
hereafter some few odds and ends of my answers to cor- 
respondents, with, perhaps, other paragraphs suggested 
by re-reading of letters and conversations on political 
topics. 

First of all. If for convenience, etc., in private cor- 
respondence, I put such matter in type, I should set 
my word of congratulation, my testimony of profound 
respect for the people of our State. What a glorious 
record for a majority of the voters of California ! How- 
ever depressed I may confess myself to be on the gen- 
eral outlook, I do find comfort and cheer as I turn to 
the testimony given by our fellow-citizens of the Golden 
Commonwealth at the last election. Though the num- 
bers were pretty evenly divided, so far as the canvass 
disclosed, we know that there were at least four or five 
thousand fraudulent ballots counted in this State 
for the bribe-taker, and we know, above all, that 
most of the SO.OOO men who voted for the Democratic 
electors resisted some special corrupt offers for their 
suffrages. 

Glorious people of Cali r ornia ! A million of dollars 
were scattered throughout your borders by Republican 
agents, with the hope and expectation of securing a ma- 
jority of at least 5,000 for the perjurer nominated by 
the Chicago Convention ; but a majority of the people 
spurned the tempter and put the State in the roll of 
hodor. 



Of course a majority of the Republicans are honest 
men. 

Of course they are. Who said they were not? False, 
venal leadership, or blind, bitter prejudice, amounting 
to bigotry, control many of them. A year ago I rode 
up from Los Angeles with George W. Julian of Indiana, 
and in the course of our conversation he frequently ex- 
pressed his wonder, in exclamatory sentences, at the 
infatuation of many old -line Republicans. "Strange! 
Strange ! How they stick to the party name ! For 
that is all there is left of it, as measured by its record 
from 1856 to 1867." 



In 1876 the tops of the ballot boxes of San Francisco 
wi re actually lifted, and thousands of Democratic votes 
taken out and thousands of Republican votes put in. 
That was not attempted or done in 1880. But two or 
three thousand fraudulent votes were cast in this city 
at the last Presidential election by repeaters. It was 
the intention and expectation of some of the more 
courageous managers of the Republican party to cast 
more than twice three thousand fraudulent votes. 
Their method of operations ought to be understood by 



the people generally . Perhaps you wondered why so 
many copies of the Register were made'.' Take a page 
like this : 

D. 

*John Day 

t William Dedee 

Henry Doe 

James Due 

oFelix Dye 

Now, Day is known to be dead. Dedee is out of 
town. It is ascertained that Dye is a business man at 
the Cliff House. There arc many other men, ot 
that were indicated, but I give these as a sufficient 
sample. Put opposite the dead man's name was a star. 
Put opposite the absentee was a dagger. Put opposite 
the member of the Cliff House brigade was a circle. 
Republican strikers were watching at each polling place 
with lists to mark voters, so as to tell who had ami u ho 
had not voted. At 12 o'ci&ek the repeaters were started 
out in gangs of six or seven to go the rounds with tueee 
tallies, having a perfect understanding and system of 
simple cipher and sign signals to exchange with their 
acquaintances and "pals," — the watchers at the voting 
places. 

Mr. Ault, President of one of our Tenth Ward Clubs, 
followed a gang of these repeaters on the last election 
day, and broke them up speedily. The systematic chal- 
lenging at the polls after half-past 1, in San Francisco 
last Fall, undoubtedly saved us from at least three 
thousand of these pious ballots, that had heen prepared 
for Garfield and Davis. If the challenging had begun 
at 12 o'clock, we would undoubtedly have had a re- 
corded majority of several thousand votes for Hancock 
and English; and this without reference to (probable) 
similar pro in Oakland, Sacramento, Vallejo, 

Marysville, Los Angeles and San Jose. 



The leaders of the Republican party are losl to 
shame. See Carl Schurs denouncing the corruption ol 
Radicalism in one week, at the Fifth Avenue H 
New York City, in 1878, and taking a promise of a Sec 
retaryahip the next from Ha rs; alter eulo- 

gizing Samuel J. Tilden and denouncing the class of 

politicians to which John Sherman belongs, turning 

around and urging people to vote against 
Tilden and for Sherm < The leaders of that 

party arc wholly lost to shame. We have abundant 
testimony to that fact in the actions of the small fellows 
who lead that party in this State, and, who, bj reason 

of their feebler intellects and lower grade "i moral 

, are not so grcath to be blamed. See Booth, 
and Swift, and Estee, and Pixley, and Pitch and Fick- 
ering and Company, a few years ago condemning the 
Republican party, and most emphatically protesting 
against an) more bloody-shirt wavings, and at the last 



SOME ODDS AND ENDS OF PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE. 



campaigns squalling- loudest and longest as, professedly, 
the most Radical of Radicals. What a spectacle to pro- 
voke ineffable contempt among men that are men. 
As well expect to tickle a rhinocerous on his shoulder 
with a feather as to excite any emotion of shame in the 
breasts of any of the foremost chieftains in the Radical 
camp. Don't attempt such a thing. They probably 
never experienced the sensation for any cause ; cer- 
tainly for no political reason. Every intelligent, thor- 
oughly informed and unprejudiced and honest man, 
who was prominent in the Union party, who is now in 
the land of the living, is a member of the Democratic 
party. To this there are no exceptions. The prejudice 
of some men in politics amounts to impenetrable and 
immovable bigotry. So there is absolute excuse for 
many and charity for all. 



The most insufferable hypocrisy is exhibited by the 
so-called Independent Republican Civil Service "Re- 
formers." Take the most lauded one, the editor of 
Harper's Journal of Civilization (heaven save the 
mark!), George W. Curtis. I remember when the 
Harpers were the special friends of the slave-holder, 
and would permit nothing to appear in their magazine 
or other publications that would be offensive to their 
Southern patrons. In a day they lost their patronage 
south of Mason and Dixon's line, and their scruples in 
the way mentioned at the same time. "Civilization," 
indeed ! The Harpers found a nice, smooth-spoken 
hypocrite for their literary Captain, in George W. 
Curtis. Does any respectable man undertake to tell 
you that he is sincere while he presides over a journal 
that lampooned, caricatured and vilified, to the utter- 
most, such men as Samuel J. Tilden and George VV. 
Julian, and Horace Greeley and Charles Sumner, and 
Allen G. Thurman and Lyman Trumbull? At one time 
actually putting the emphasis of ridicule against such 
men on the score of their loyalty to justice and right. 
Of course, it is part of a great plan, of a cunning or- 
ganization, to have loud-mouthed and smooth-tongued 
professors of " Reform" in the party of Radicalism, 
between whiles preaching and prating about the ne- 
cessity of tenure-of-offlce acts for every office-holder, 
and all that sort of thing. 

But it is said that Curtis is a "scholar," and a 
" scholar," and a "scholar." Not deep. But precisely 
what has that to do with this matter? No less a hypo- 
crite for all that. Would a decent man, of the Repub- 
lican party of 1856-1807, remain in the editorial charge 
of a paper that habitually caricatured Sumner and 
Greeley, and Gratz Brown and Trumbull, and Julian, 
and men of that stamp ? Not for an instant. 



You recollect, my dear Frank [Mahon] that I said to 
you last month that we must exercise great charity for 
the hardshell bigots of New England, who, (most of 
them) stayed at home during the war, but who are now 
honestly voting and voting the Republican ticket — 
even tickets bearing the name of such a branded per- 
jurer as Garfield ; for I said to you that these good men 
did not think it possible that a Democrat stood in any 
hope of heaven . You thought my words rather of the 
exaggeration order, as I could see by your smile. To- 
day I chanced to read George H. Holden's entertaining 
article on "Hawthorne Among His Friends," in the 
July (1S81) Harper's Magazine, p. 263. Here is what he 
says : " I would advise no man, unless his faith in the 
greatness and purity of Hawthorne (as noble-minded, 
pure a man as ever breathed in America, and chief 
among our genuises) is established beyond the possibil- 
ity of disturbance, to investigate too closely into the 
muck-heaps of local prejudice which to this day 
are to be found to exist among certain cliques of his 
native village. * * * Hawthorne was a Democrat 

in politics, when by these people grave doubts were eu- 
tertained whether a Democrat might by any possibility 
be admitted to heaven." 



I am unable to conceive of a more humiliating and 
disheartening spectacle than that presented by the 
principal newspapers of the country with respect to this 
very matter. Here are the people paying from ten to 
twenty times as much for a telegraphic dispatch as 
should be charged, the cost of sending being merely 
nominal, and yet rarely will you see, even in the most 
obscure portion of any of our more influential news- 
papers, a single paragraph, an accidentally quoted sen- 
tence, hinting the fact of imposition and extortion on 
the part of the Western Union Telegraph Company. 
Champions of the people, indeed ! The Western Union 
Telegraph Company and the Associated Press, by 
bribery or by intimidation (not direct ; Oh, no ; too 
smart for that) dictate what the Press of this country 
shall not say in reference to a Postal Telegraph. 

We ought to have a Postal Telegraph as the result of 
the passage of a bill by Congress of not more than ten 
sections. Within one year from the passage of such a 
bill — if its provisions were honestly carried out — the 
people of California would be able to send a ten-word 
message to the Atlantic States for 25 cents. Within 
twelve months after such a tariff had been inaugurated, 
under a properly worded bill, the people of California 
would be able to send a twenty-word dispatch to the 
Eastern States for 10 cents. Within twelve months 
after this last date — that is, within three years after 
the proper Postal Telegraph bill went into operation— 
the people of California would be able to send a 
twenty-word dispatch to the Atlantic States for five 
cents. 

This Government of the United States, under the 
operations of a proper Postal Telegraph measure, could 
and would make ■money, five years after the beginning 
of the workings of Government telegraph lines, equal 
in extent to those now controlled by the Western Union 
Telegraph Company, with a tariff fixed at three 
cents for a ten-word dispatch between the most distant 
points to which the Hues were run. 

The truth of this promise and prophecy can be 
demonstrated. See facts and figures in my lecture on 
this subject. 



As to a Postal Telegraph, every day brings out fresh 
evidence and fresh emphasis, in every practical sense of 
the vvopd, in favor of such an institution. I refer you 
to my lecture on that subject for detail of statement 
and argument up to the day of its publication. 



The special cunning of the managers for the monopo- 
lies is now exhibited in getting up side issues and 
nursing all sorts of demagogues, from Denis Kearneys 
up, with a view to mislead and bamboozle the people. 
The lawyers and flunkies of the Central Pacific Railroad 
Company on this coast are most assiduous in their 
efforts, at various times, to bolster up some fellow who 
can bawl " reform" in the streets, or write a pamphlet 
or a book elaborately, and perhaps to some extent cap- 
tivatingly, promising the millenium if something or 
other is done by the people, through their legislative 
representatives, in some other direction. Anything to 
divert the minds of the people from the real burdens 
under which they groan, and from the real reforms 
that ought to be established bv law. 

So you will hear or read about Leland Stanford's sympa- 
thy with the poor evicted peasantry of Ireland ! Think 
of it ! I have heard men get up and eulogize Leland 
Stanford as a man of " broad and generous sympa- 
thies'—evinced and illustrated by his sentiments on the 
Irish land question. The picture of the Old Patriarch 
in " Little Dorrit" is brought before the discriminating 
hearer b}- such remarks with dazing vividness. 

Anything to divert the attention of the people from 
the supreme grievance at home. 

What is that supreme grievance in California to-day ? 
Extortionate tariff on the railroads and on the tele- 
graph lines. That is what is the matter. You pay two 
or three times as much as you ought to pay when you 
travel on the Central Pacific Railroad Company's lines. 
You pay from ten to twenty times as much as is reason- 
able charge when you are compelled to patronize the 
Western Union Telegraph Company. That is what is 
the matter. Now, if you can be led to forget this fact, 
once knowing it, it's a' great end achieved. Getting up 
a hurrah about some little five cent local extortion, and 
getting up a hurrah, and a hurrah, and a hurrah about 
good men for the city, and good men for the city, and 
good men for the city, and'getting into office church- 
plate-passing hypocrites who are owned by Leland 
Stanford, Charles Crocker and C. P. Huntington— that 
is the business that is mapped and modeled at the 



,\ 



SOME ODDS AND ENDS OF PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE. 



corner of Fourth and Townscnd streets, in the city of 
San Francisco. 

The peopie fume and fret, and then are pacified and 
misled. They discover their false leaders, by whom 
they should never have been deceived, and then the 
game is repeated over again, with just enough variation 
to excuse, perhaps, the general public from a sweeping 
charge of perfect idiocy. 

The game of bamboozle has been played and re- 
peated during the last fifteen years in California by the 
Central Pacific Railroad Company, and still there seems 
as little prospect as ever of relief from the extortions 
of that monopoly. We ought to have relief forthwith 
by the Congress of the United States. 

The original Pacific Railroad Aet provides for a re- 
duction of fares by Congress, and a short bill of two 
sections, and not over a hundred words altogether, 
would secure for the people a first-class overland ticket 
from San Francisco to Omaha for one-half the present 
charge. Why does not Congressman lierry introduce 
such a bill? Will General Rosecrans introduce such a 
bill ? Think of this matter and inquire. 



I foresaw what this railroad monopolv would be years 
ago. I was the first man on this coast to discern the 
signs of the times with respect to it. I made speeches 
on the stump and in the Senate of Nevada— as thousands 
can testify— in 1864-68, warning and foretelling per- 
fectly in regard to this matter. I urged the passage of 
Measures which, if they had been finally adopted, 
would have prevented this railroad monopoly on the 
Pacific Coast. While I was engaged in urging such 
measures I received the following letter : 

"Virginia, January 30, 1865. 

Colonel Sumner. 
"Dear Friend : 
"As a very warm friend of the Central Pacific 
Railroad Company, I would like to receive a line from 
you defining your position. It is a question that is of 
great importance to us all, and will be made much 
more <■/ a„ issue at the coming Congressional election 
than it has been in the past. 

"If you are a friend to this Company, then I advise 
you to say so in strong terms, so that I can use the 
same in your favor. 

"Respectfully yours, 

"John Gillig." 

To this I replied: 

"Senate Chamber, Carson City, ^ 
January 30, 1865. J 

"To John Gillig, Esq., Virginia City, Nevada. 

"Dear Sir: 
"Your favor of this day has just been received. 
You will pardon me for saying that I was somewhat 
surprised to learn that you did not already and thor- 
oughly understand my position on railroad matters. I 
shall be very frank, or endeavor to be so. 

"As a bona-fide citizen of Nevada, I am truly anxious 
to have railroad communication from Pacific navigable 
tide waters at the earliest practicable time. I am in 
favor of the Epnstien resolution, asking Congress to 
grant a bonus of 810,000,000 to the first company that 
reaches the base of the eastern slope of the Sierra 
Nevada. [The Plaeorville and Washoe Railroad was 
then located, and plenty of pounds sterling were ready 
for the investment. See my lecture on 'A Trip to 
Pioehe'— the foot notes especially.] 

"I am, of course, heart and soul for a railroad across 
the mountains and the plains. But I judge that the 
Central Pacific Railroad officers have not acted in good 
faith. 

"However: they have all they asked; and by half-way 
work they can conform to all prescribed obligations— ail 
obligations precedent to securing the enormous govern- 
ment subsidies. Those subsidies can not now be re- 
pealed ; nor would I have them repealed if they could 
be. 

"1 know not how far your intimation goes. I don't 
know of any rights that the Central Pacific Railroad 
Company have acquired to dictate in our elections. I 
know the unserupulousness of the Stanfords, for I saw 
it illustrated on election day in San Francisco, 

"I am for a Pacific railroad, quick. I think our 
State life and prosperity as a people depend to a great 



extent on the prosped and fact of railroad communica- 
tion to the Pacific, and so on to the Atlantic Si 

"I hope you will remain my friend, as I subscribe my- 
self, ' J 
" Fours truly, 

" Ch \r,i.i:s a. Sumner." 

Of course the letter from .Mr. Gillig came under 
authority from t be Central Pacific Railroad managers, 
and was to inform me, as it did sufficiently, th 
would support me for Congress if I would do their bid- 
ding, and that if I refused to be tie ir servant or slave I 
might expect their hostility. Mv reply to Mr. Gillig's 
letter was hurriedlj dashed off while sitting at my desk 
in the Senate chamber of Nevada, and while at | 

time paying some attention to the business of that body; 
and, of course, it is written in a familiar and off-hand 

style. But it sufficiently disclosed my position then, 

which was taken in full view of the fact that in all hu- 
man probability my political aspirations from that time 

forth— as an enemy of railroad monopoly— might be con- 
sidered as vain and foolish. 

The people of the State of Nevada at their primaries 
twice nominated me for Congress, and twice was I de- 
feated at the State Convention at Carson by the aid of 
money taken from the coffers of the Central Pacific 
Railroad monopoly in order to secure the office. 

Others affected hostility to the Coming Monopoly; 
but, when they were once in office, thc-v, became the 
creatures of that gigantic monopoly. 



Anything to keep the people's, mind away from the 
Main Question. For in the meantime monopolies live 
andgrowfat andfatter upon their extortions. Anything 

to tide over and sail along. 

If the people once brought the Railroad and Telegraph 
monopolies under dominion of just law, the local mon- 
opolies of the several cities, and all lesser State and Na- 
tional monopolies, would soon disappear as such. The 
giant should be throttled. And simple, plain, straight- 
forward, brief legislative enactments will accomplish the 
disenthrallment. It is all nonsense to talk about the 
impossibility of electing honest men to the legislature, 
or true men, who will stand right up to the front on this 
main quesfion. You and I know in the several counties 
in this State men who can be completely trusted on this 
great issue, so far as integrity is concerned. And we 
know that a very small proportion of such men have 
found their way to places of power. And it does seem 
almost a hopeltss task to strive for the election of such 
men. 

[We have elected nian.v barking demagogues to Con- 
gress and to the State Legislature who have introduced 
Reform bills, and allowed them to sleep; intl 
them for blackmailing purposes, or to "make a rec- 
ord"— being instructed to "make a record" of this kind 
by their masters at monopoly headqnarters. I 

I have not been thus candid and explicit in this reply to 
your letter, because I have now no expectation whatever 
of occupying anj place of power as a foe of monopolies. 
I have always been so outspoken. It is true, mv strength 
must remain solely as an advocate before the people, i 
would speak as plainly if this were not so; but if any 
apology is needed for this direct and candid si 
from me, it may lie found in tile concede, 1 fad 

fessed by myself -that] am such a demonstrated enemy 
of tiiese monopolies that under no consideration would 
they permit mj election to Congress or to any other 
place of power where I could affect their interests di- 
rectly. 



As an illustration of how the railroad and i. 
monopolies hoodwink and fool the peop 
rise to party influence of this miser . Dennis 

Kearnej a low, filthy-tonjrued, lying, cowardly fellow 

without a -rain of manhood in any liber of his Com- 
position. Look at the placing in power of Beer 
who a few mouths ago was calling meetings in Ban 
Francisco for the purpose to use his own language — 
of sav ing the Workingmen's candidates from the arts of 
the demagogue! What is he now? .lust what I pro- 
phesied he would show himself to be a mere flunky 
to Leland Stanford and Charles Crocker. 



SOME ODDS AND ENDS OF PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE. 



There is no use in disguising the fact— San Francisco 
is just now at a stand still. Houses that three years 
ago rented in central portions of the citv for 8250 are 
now let for §100— and the landlords are glad to get good 
tenants at that figure. What has brought this about ? 
There was an incoming tide of the best kind of immi- 
gration five years ago. It was stopped in a great meas- 
ure by the false agitation which the Central Pacific 
Railroad Company and the telegraph monopoly, through 
their independent organs, created and fostered. And in 
its place, or partly filling its place, in point of numbers, 
came the worst kind of immigration. 

You have to pay $120 for a first-class passage from 
here to New York, when a first-class passage ought not 
to cost you over §70 at the outside. At this latter fig- 
ure the railroads would actually make more money 
within a short period after the adoption of a proper 
tariff. And with such a tariff we could have our pro- 
portion of the better class of immigration : and thous- 
ands upon thousands would pour in to this coast 
from the existing communities of the East— of the very 
best class of people; there born and bred and educated 
into noble specimens of manhood and womanhood. 



It does seem, just at this present writing, as if the 
sun of opportunity shone, or was about to rise, for the 
Democratic Party. I tell you candidly as to the reforms 
of which I have spoken:— if the reliefs against the rail- 
road monopolies and the telegraph monopolies are not 
brought about through the agency of the Democratic 
Party, I don't expect that they will be compassed by any- 
thing short of Revolution. In other words,I expect (unless 
we have a change for the better through the instrumen- 
tality of the Democratic Party) that for years and years 
to come, far beyond my generation, the people of 
the United States will remain under the thraldom of 
the monopolies; — the rich growing richer and the poor 
growing poorer and poorer, until Revolution shall 
come. 

Of course — as a matter of course — there will be all 
sorts of make-believes of relief and reform; or little, oc- 
casional alleviations. Even now, when the Western 
Union Telegraph Company reduces the price of a dis- 
patch from Podnnk to Poop Hollow two or three cents, 
the independent Bulletin, and the independent Call, 
and the independent Chronicle, and the independent 
Alia, and the independent Record-Union, and the in- 
dependent Marysville Express, and the independent Los 
Angeles Express, and the independent Independent of 
Stockton, and the other newspapers of the same com- 
pany, shout out in leaded paragraphs, items and column 
editorials. And that is but an illustration of what will 
be in the future in this respect. And by and by the 
suppressed inventions (see my lecture on the Postal 
Telegraph), and the inventions of which we already have 
a prophecy in the accomplishment of the past, will effect 
such a mighty reduction — palpably so — in the cost of 
running locomotives, and in the cost of rapid telegraphy, 
that the present tariff of the railroad and telegraph 
monopolies will be manifold more extortionate than 
now. The people will perhaps get a little fraction of 
the benefit from these inventions by a comparatively 
slight reduction in the cost of traveling by rail or send- 
ing word by lightning. And over this, I say, there will 
be a wild tumult of eulogy for the Stanfords and Crock- 
ers, and Jay Goulds, and James Simonton's — proceeding 
from the independent and Republican Press and the mo- 
nopoly lawyers and the Denis Kearneys. 

What we want, and what we should have, is simple, 
direct, positive and unmistakable National and State 
legislation, giving the people at once the fullest benefit 
of all inventions. Stanford did not invent steam. It 
seems necessary, in some "arguments" with the petti- 
foggers of the railroad company, to state that the inher- 
ent force of this great motive power was planted there 
by the Almighty. Neither Jim simonton nor any other 
magnate of the Associated Press and the Western Union 
Telegraph Company invented or forged the bolts of Jove. 
Neither Mr. Stanford nor Mr. Gould nor Jim Simonton 
applied, with inventive capacity, steam or electricity to 
the practical purposes of mankind. [As for that matter, 
they never paid a cent for their railroad and telegiaph 
properties.] With a reasonable reward for the inventor 
and patentee — if he comes within modern dates — inven- 
tions should pass to the benefit of the whole people. 
That is supposed to be the intended operation of the Law. 



And we should have, further, simple, straightforward, 
brief statutes effecting this very matter,— determining 
this result. 



California is in a position to do great things on these 
subjects. If her true people — if her men of sound judg- 
ments and conscience and candid dispositions and reso- 
lute wills, come together this year and the next in the 
Democratic Party and choose and elect men to the prin- 
cipal offices in the State, and to Congress, we shall make 
a great step forward toward achieving the results so 
much longed for — for which you and I have so earnest- 
ly struggled during these many years last past. 

No halfway measures, no halfway men. Every frank 
man knows in his heart of heans that the only fractions 
of reform that we have had in this direction during the 
past ten years have been due to men and movements in 
the Democratic party. I will have no political affilia- 
tion — as I have no hope — with anything else. 



I am aware that it is said that no reliance can be 
placed upon any party or any men in this great anti- 
monopoly struggle; that one professed anti-monopolist 
is as good as another — is as likely to prove true as 
another. This is all humbug. This is the talk which 
the C. P. R. R. Company and the Western Union Tele- 
graph Company often put into the columns of the inde- 
pendent press. The Democratic party, by its leaders in 
Congress, has shown, I think, that it, as a national 
party, can be trusted on this great issue — if those same 
leaders are kept in leadership when the party attains 
general dominion at Washington. The momentum of 
the National party is right. The leading Democrats in 
the East, with few exceptions— and 1 will note some of 
them — have already proven themselves sound in this 
contest. And you and I can pick out men in this State 
— from one end to the other— who can be relied upon in 
this connection. Just as I write, the names of some of 
these men occur to me. There is Ryland, of San Jose; 
there are A. Hewell and J. D. Spencer, (there's a man 
that should be in Congress or the Gubernatorial chair,) 
and W. Grollman, of Stanislaus; there is Doctor Mont- 
gomery, of Sacramento; there is Kellogg, of Plumas; 
there is Biggs, of Chico; there is Judge Wallace, of 
Napa; there is Chapman of Los Angeles; thore are J. 
V. Coffey and Frank Mahon, of San Francisco. Let me 
make the nominations and I will have solid and unpur- 
chasable State Legislatures and Congressional delega- 
tion! There is no difficulty whatever in picking out 
men, who, in prominent State offices, and in our Legis- 
lature, and in the United States Senate Chamber and 
the House of Representatives, would stand true, and 
would be active and aggressive as anti-monopolist repre- 
sentatives of the people. There is no excuse at this 
point of time for the people, if they select hypocrites 
aud frauds out of the ranks of the Democratic party for 
their principal nominees. 



I know very well that the monopolists have their 
men in the Democratic party. 1 know very well that if 
the Democratic party would have consented to nominate 
Stephen J. Field for the Presidency in 1880, the C. P. 
R. R. Company would have contributed largely in his 
behalf. That is well understood. 

The C. P. R. R. Company had a candidate for Con- 
gress in San Francisco last year — (he is still in the field) 
— who went about ,in the early, part of the campaign, 
saying a la Edinburg bagman, " Stow [boss railroad 
lobby lawyer] wants-me. Stow wants me!" 

And, b} r the way, no man who went to Cincinnati, in 
the delegation of the Democratic party from this State, 
in June 1880, and there supported this C. P. R. R. can- 
didate for the Presidency, Stephen J. Field, should be 
permitted to have any voice of influence in our councils 
hereafter. The same should be said of those who went 
with the perfidious, to give them "moral" support; from 
Duke Gwiu down. 

We know those men well. Surely they are on the 
record. This proceeding was before the face of every 
Democrat on this coast, as flagrant a piece of personal 
treachery— that going hence from the Democratic State 
Convention of 1880 as a Nationxl Convention delegate, 
and supporting Stephen J. Field — as was ever perpe- 
trated in the history of politics. 



SOME ODDS AND ENDS OF PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE. 



I know very well that the Western Union Telegraph 
Company would support, cheerfully. Beck, of Kentuckj , 
for the Presidency of the United States. And, indeed, 
all the monopolists would sing sweetly in favor of the 
candidacy of Bayard, of Delaware— the '•Democratic" 
pet of the Wall-street rings. 

But I say there is no excuse for the people of <diis 
State or for the people of the Nation, il hereafter they 
put up such men. who cannot be relied upon asanti-n >p 
olists, in the strictest and most imperative sense of the 
word. 



Is it not time to check the tyranny of the monopolists? 
I tell you that the people only half realize the temper 
of these men who manage these robbimr corporations. 
Most of them, of course, are ignorant as well as brutish 
creatures. Of the few who have received a little educa- 
tional polish, it may be said that it has been demon- 
strated that no amount of culture could take the hog 
out of them. 

Their disposition is well indicated by a remark which 
one of their kind — who married into their immediate 
circle, and lias a side-show establishment — getting his 
goods at family freight tariff— by a remark which this 
man made to my former partner, Mr. William M. Cut- 
ter. He said: 

"Yes, I am in favor of monopolies, and if I had my 
sweet way and will I would have a padlock on every 
man"s throat in the State of California, and charge him 
a dollar and a half for every drink of water that I per- 
mitted to pass down his gullet." 

There spoke the sentiments of the Central Pacific Rail- 
road Company monopoly . 



In 1864, the railroad company took 8250,000 in U. S. 
bonds and hypothecated them for a sum sufficient to 
buy up all the coal oil in the market— bonds solemnly 
dedicated by the Government, and so accepted, to C. P. R. 
R. construction; and at once raised the price of coal oil 50 
per cent. That was a specimen of the throat clutching 
of the Orphans of Nob Hill. 

Having purchased the Santa Monica Railroad of John 
P. Jones' theC. P. R. R. Co. proceeded to tear up the 
splen lid wharf that had been constructed from that 
grandest of sea-bathing watering places; naturally the 
most eligible location for such a resort that I ever saw . 
Crocker & Co. lied by saying that the wharf was dan- 
gerous. The real object of tnis ''unconscionable piece 
of vandalism "—as Judge Miles fitly termed it— was to 
bear the price of real estate, so that the C. P. R. R. 
c nild gobble it up for a song. The consequent de- 
preciation in value of landed property was expected to 
be much more, by far, than the value of the work de- 
stroyed. The company went through the formality of 
sending one or more of their tadpole engineers, with 
instructions to "condemn," as unsafe, etc. The ob- 
ject in this being to plead with owners and influen- 
tial parties, having to do with the land titles at Santa 
Monico— and who were or naturally would be exasper- 
ated at the act of wharf demolition — that the " rip- 
ping up of the d -1 thing ' (as one of the Railroad 

Directors expressed it, in a burst of confidence) was 
not a wanton or a purely selfish act. 

The property -owners there seem to have held out 
well; for the illustrated Herald of Los Angeles for 
May, '81, says that Crocker & Co. have not yet suc- 
ceeded in perfectine their intended grab. When tin; 
railroad managers shall have compelled a "sale" of 
this magnificent property; to themselves, for a- com - 
paritively insignificant sum, then they will put up a 
big %i a-day hotel, and put the whole front under ex- 
tortionate toll. So it goes. 

It is well known that "the money spent at Wil- 
mington would have given Los Angeles a better har- 
bor at, Santa Monica, and at half the distance from tin' 
sea." Says General E. P. Beale; "The vandalism of 
the Southern Pacific in arresting the progress of the 
beautiful town whbh was growing up at Santa Monica, 
and destroying the wharf, is one of its ,,< 
which has justly incensed the people against that cor- 
poration." 



The Railroad Monopoly and the Telegraph Monopoly- 
say that work can he done for the people a greal deal 
cheaper in the way of transporting persons and intelli- 



gence, if the business is all in the hands of one company. 
The force of this argument— SO farasit is an argument— 
riththeadvo ol t Postal Telegraph. Let 

the United state. Government have a monopoly of 
transmitting dispatches, and in less than ten vears— 
under a proper administration under Democratic con- 
trol— the people will be sending their letters by light- 
ning at about the same cost that is now attached to 
transmitting communications by mail And there will 
be all the facilit corner boxes, general car- 

rier deliverj . etc. 

The exactions of the Telegraph Monopoly arc simply 
marvel of marvels how t 
in this connection ire hidden from the eyes and the 
understanding of He- people. You, sir, arc charged 
from ten to twentj and in some instances, even as high 
as forty tint: s as much for a telegraphic dispatch as the 
sending costs; and inventions <i>;- suppressed boughl 
up and suppressed— in order to prevent its being 
proclaimed, as an unquestionable truth, that you are 
charged a hundred times as much for a telegraphic dis- 
patch from here to the Eastern States as you ought to 
be tolled, considering the expense to the telegraph 
companv. See my lecture on the Postal Telegraph 
for highest authority quoted in support of this state- 
ment. . 

Jim Gamble, Superintendent of the Western I nion 
Telegraph Company at San Francisco, said in writing, 
over his own signature, in 1878, March 18th. that in 
1876 the British Government "lost" si, 176,115 by the 
Postal Telegraph. Where did he get his figures? He 
is almost equal to Jim Simonton as a truth-teller. I 
have before me the official report of the British Tele- 
graphs for 1ST i;. By that it appears that there was a 
net income for 1876 JO! And a twenty- 

word message in Great Britain from Leeds and to John 
O'Groats costs a sixpence. Think of it, 



Shameless ! Of course the Republican party leaders 
meless. The illustrations of that fact are innu- 
merable. In davs or in months, when it has not paid 
the Independent Press to be dishonest— in interval 
, lavs— or at times when that press has been under the 
absolute control of honest men, speaking in all honesty 
and candor, the truth has come out. 

Henry J. Raymond was an honest man by instinct 
and disposition.' He started, after the civil war was over, 
to act honestly in politi :s in connection with Southern 
affairs. The New York Times in 1866-68 spoke the 
political truth— speaking exactly the opposite of its ut- 
terances of to-day. At one brief period in 1S69, the 
New York Times advocated a Postal Telegraph— in rice- 
watery stvle. 

It was 'shown to Henry J. Raymond that financial 
ruin stared him in the face if he persisted in attempting 
to carry out his honest p ditical reforms. 

John Bigelow was summarily ordered out of the edi- 
torial room-; and management of the New York Times 
immediati mild editorial in favor of some 

sort of a Postal Tele raph system. 

The New York Tribune spoke honestly and bravely 
for the political truth in L872. Horace Greeley's last ut- 
terances I relations of the North and 
the South should be eatheredin one volume, forperma- 
. ii 

Whereisthe New York Tribune today? Th 
ture of the monopolists -the most abject and servile 
and serviceable of all. 

When Horace Greeley dictated in general outlines to 
Whitelav. ven small ability), Whitelaw 

■ ,\ words in a g i »1 hand Now the scribe for 
. tint was, is the flunk 13 tor Gould and Simon- 
ton, that are. 

M11 tl ien and boj 9, remember the New 

York Evening Post: What a change has tal 
there! Sorrowfully I rteps of its de- 

cline we - • ! E lite I by Carl Schurz, 

under the co ' owner- 

ship, of one of the dlroad corp 

What a fa ,v bige- 

low! Behold and « 

No wonder thai SO many children ill this country arc 
growing Up without a belief ill a God. It doefi 'lot need 

ol H0I3 Scripture by an Ingcr- 
soll to aid the do il in breeding the) old average of infi- 



SOME ODDS AND ENDS OF PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE. 



dels. His contribution in that service is compara- 
tively trifling. But these grasping and rotten corpora- 
tions have made it plain to the young men of this coun- 
trv that no considerable political preferment can be ob- 
tained or held without their grace. And with all man- 
ner of flatteries and blandishments, as well as direct of- 
fers of bribery, these monopolists search out young men 
of ability, that they may warn them from the path of 
political rectitude and make them their servants — either 
their openly avowed or secretly bonded creatures. 

And the shameless exhibition by the New York Trib- 
une and the New York Times and the New York Eo°n- 
ing Post — in the inconsistency of men still acting with 
those papers or selling out, knowing what the purpose 
of the purchases was — is one of the most potential of 
all demoralizing exhibitions, brought home to the young 
men of this country: to induce them to laugh at and 
despise all honor and decency in the character of a pa- 
triotic citizenship. 

Unto every young man of ability in this country, the 
monopolists say by every channel of communication — 
and they say it daily, in substance and effect, by the 
history and hissing of the Independent Press, from 
one end of the country to the other: " If you don't 
take a salary or a pension from the corporation mon- 
opolists of the land, you are a fool, you are a fool, you 
are a fool !" 



Shameless? You think that our Independent Press is 
more shameless than any other ? Well, it is as nearly 
up to the standard of the New York Times and Tribune 
and Herald and Evening Post, as it is possible for the 
smaller brains and the more insignificant souls who rule 
and rot and stink in the "Independent Press" mana- 
gers' sanctums in San Francisco to make it. 

At the present time, and for several years past, the 
Alia and Bulletin and Call have not pretended to be 
anything - but railroad and telegraph monopoly flunk- 
ies. The most influential flunky of the railroad and 
telegraph monopolists on this coast has been the Chron- 
icle. Between times, it is instructed to play the part 
of the people's friend, and all that. The Call and the 
Chronicle are to do this with the poorer classes of the 
community — the Chronicle being specially effective in 
this line. The Bulletin and Alta are to work in what 
its managers call the upper crust. Every thing is to be 
salved over with respectability and respectability and 
respectability, so called. The Call and the Chronicle 
will take turns — will alternate — in nursing up the Den- 
nis Kearney's and Stephen Maybells, as the word may 
go from the corner of Fourth and Townsend streets. 

Undoubtedly there is some real rivalry between the 
managers of the Call and Bulletin and the managers 
of the Chronicle. This is with respect to small adver- 
tisements and the amount of subsidy to be obtained 
from Republican committees and railroad and tele- 
graph treasuries. 

My advice to the people is to drop these papers alto- 
gether. You will feel better, you will know more, you 
will be clearer in vision to do the right thing, if from 
this time forth you neither patronize nor look at any 
one of these sheets. 



No; the New York Sun is not to be relied upon eith- 
er. The management there know very well that the 
majority of the people in New York are in favor fo 
Democratic principles. They know 7 , furthermore, that 
the field of direct and continuous advocacy for the mon- 
opolies is well occupied, in New York, by the Times 
and 'Tribune. It is entirely a mercenary matter with 
ths Sun. 

The hypocrisy and venality of that sheet can be illus- 
trated by a hundred instances of comparison and con- 
fcrast. The Sun did not originally advocate the nomin- 
ation of Samuel J. Tilden for the Presidency. When 
the Electoral Commission was first proposed, the Sun 
did nut object to it. Not until after the passage of the 
Electoral bill was a foregone conclusion, did it say one 
word against it. 

And, you may have noticed that when the Democra- 
cy of Indiana commenced holding public meetings, in 
accordance with the suggestion of Mr. Tilden (which 
suggestion, acted upon throughout the United States, 
would have resulted in the inauguration of Mr. Tilden) 
the Sun denounced such meetings; and expressly 
said that anything of the kind would meet with 



its opposition. And the Sun fully indulged in the 
hush, hush, hush business, which the monopolists in- 
structed their organs to begin and continue, while the 
work of President-robbing was going on — aiding to 
make the people in each State believe that the Democ- 
racy in every other State only wanted peace, peace, 
peace, at any sacrifice. 

Several times during the last four years the Sun has 
announced that Mr. Tilden would not be the President 
of the United States; so saying voluntarily, without 
provocation, at the time when it was most likely to 
have effect with all classes of readers. Then, when it 
was known that Mr. Tilden would not receive or would 
not accept the nomination at Cincinnati, the Sun began 
its hurrah for the Sage of Gramercy, and all that. This 
being done so as to he in a good position for that most 
outrageous piece of treachery — if it can be called treach- 
ery — of which it was guilty near the close of the cam- 
paign of 1SS0— the "No-use-in-mincing-matters" edi- 
torial business. 

No; the monopolist managers are very cunning. They 
have all sorts of organs — newspapers in every party, 
demagogues in every organization and every clique. 
But, I have said and I say it again: By this time the 
people should know who the true men are, and know 
what is desired and what is desirable. The people at this 
stage of the great national battle should not be misled 
by journals of any sort. 



Yes; I know Frank Pixley. I have known him for 
twenty-five years . He has*been in every party, and 
has begged for office in every political camp. He is the 
most effective worker — notwithstanding the fact that he 
is such a slop-over — the railroad monopolists have on 
this coast. He published a pamphlet reviving all the 
vile slanders against Broderick in '59, rcnd afterwards he 
wrote editorials eulogizing him; the same man. He is 
himself a sort of a Dennis Kearney — after his own 
kind — about the same apparent amount and char- 
acter of conscientiousness, cunning and — indifference to 
pecuniary reward. He blatherskites and makes money. 
He is the most respectable of the Independent Press 
gang in San Francisco. 



I think myself that there is to he another high rising 
tide of anti-mo aopobr talk and promise. I would not 
be surprised if Conkling and Gorham — who have been 
as obsequious tools of the monopolists as have been 
Blaine and Pixley and Garfield, and that ilk — I would 
not be surprised if they undertook to head another 
Sham of Anti-monopoly within the next two or three 
years. Such are the present indications. 

You say thnt you cannot understand how the people 
of California could tolerate Gorham as a professed Anti- 
monopolist. I tell you, my dear sir, the people forget 
the record of the past. They forget that in 1867 Gor- 
ham was the candidate of Stanford and Huntington and 
Crocker. And we have many new comers. And many 
people will forget that Conkling has been an attorney 
and flunkey of the banks and of the Express monopoly 
and of the Telegraph monopoly. The people have to be 
reinformed and re-enlightened, again and again, in re- 
gard to these matters. I know it is unpleasant to do 
this work. I hate to do it. I would a thousand fold 
rather speak well than ill of any human being. But it 
is a part of our duty — a solemn obligation resting upon 
us — to do this very work of reminding; sc that the peo- 
ple shall not have the shadow of a shade of an excuse, 
if thev again elect frauds and bilks under an anti-mon- 
opoly platform. 



Yes; the people of the State of California have been 
most tremendously deceived. The defeat of Henry H. 
Haight signified a long lease of power to the monopo- 
lists on this coast. No wonder that 'General Lewis of 
Tehama, upon that defeat, to use his own language, 
"threw up the sponge;" and saw " no use in trying an3' 
more to serve the people as an anti-monopolist." 

Anything as an expedient for a new lease of tyranny; 
the people fume and fret, and follow false leaders, and 
the monopolists wax fatter and fatter. 

Ves; I well remember the awful — I thought it blas- 
phemous — declaration of Booth after his election, as to 
the service he would do for the people. Look back up- 
on his record in the Senate, from that text! 



SOME ODDS AND ENDS OF PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE. 



Will the people again be mislead by our rotten Inde- 
pendent Press into putting Such a creature into the Uni- 
ted States Senate? They will be led to do precisely 
that thing, unless you and I exert ourselves to the ut- 
termost to defeat the plans of these conspirators against 
the liberties and rights of the people, whose immediate 
organs these Independent newspapers arc. 



The people do not even get the benefit of inventions. 
" Rapid telegraphy " has been suppressed. Gas is cheap- 
ly manufactured from crude petroleum and fresh water 
(in New York City), but the people generally derive 
no compensating benefit from these discoveries. 



It is simply ridiculous for any newspaper managers to 
pretend to be anti-monopoly and honest in their record, 
when the fact is that they supported such men as Haj es 
and Garfield for the Presidency — especially where the 
record is that the managers supported Garfield against 
Hancock. 

One of the managers of the Central Pacific Railroad 
. Compauy returned to California from the East shortly 
after the nomination of Hancock and declared that the 
General had a " walk over." It subsequently transpired 
that the managers of the great corporations of the country 
believed, that it was impossible to defeat Hancock; and 
believed, still further, that he could be brought over to 
at least a !:on-combative pledge in their behalf. It will 
be recollected— it was a matter of common notoriety — 
that General Hancock was approached with an offer of 
a very large supply of money for the Democratic cam- 
paign if he would agree to confirm the nomination of 
certain parties for Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary 
of War, Secretary of the Interior and Postmaster-Gen- 
eral. It will be remembered — to the everlasting credit 
of General Hancock [Fit to put in parallels with Joseph 
Reed's reply to the British emissary in 1775: "I am a very 
poor man, but, poor as I am, the King of Great Britain 
has not money enough to buy me."] and to the honor and 
glory of the Democratic party — that the proffer was 
rejected. Then it was that the monopolists' managers 
held a meeting and determined that Garfield must be 
elected, if it was within the bounds of possibility. Prior 
to this meeting Conkling and his satellites had been in 
the sulks. Prior to this the Xew York Sun had de- 
clared that it was impossible to defeat General Hancock. 
Immediately after this meeting Conkling entered the 
canvass vigorously in behalf of Garfield, whom he had 
so often in private denounced for his lying and bribe- 
taking. Conklling, as wel as Horsey, went to Ohio and 
Indiana on a campaign mission. Not alone with Star 
Route money was Dorsey supplied . The treasuries of 
the railroad and telegraph and bank monopolies poured 
out immense sums for his purse. It was at the direc- 
tion of the agents of the great corporations that Gar- 
field made his promises to Conkling, by which that 
chief of spoilsmen was induced to give the signal of 
energetic support to his creatures in the New York 
Custom House and elsewhere. 

And shortly after the purchased Indiana October elec- 
tion, the Sun came out with its treacherous "No-use-in 
mincing-matters" editorial — instead of denouncing- the 
corruptionists for their work in Indiana, and striving 
to move the people to a sense of the peril to our insti- 
tutions from the Conkling -Dorsey-Inghani methods of 
manipulating elections. 

Nothing could be more absurd than a profession of 
anti-monopoly sentiments on the part of any newspaper 
or any journal that supported Garfield. Many of them 
will be directed to wow cry out in favor of "Reform," 
and, in some general, diffusive, blubber-cheeked way, 
against the exactions o*" the great corporations; so that 
when the focalizing time comes thej these same news- 
papers — may be in a position to aid in demoralization, 
on a vaunted Record — from whence to Saj "We, we, we, 
have always been opposed to this monopoly, but this 
bill realy won't do" etc. That has been the his- 
tory of this thing all along. 

Intelligent men in California should take no hints, 
nor accept any species or line of leadership from news- 
papers or men who supported Garfield in a prominent 
way. Of course, there were thousands of good men who 
voted for the bribe-taker on sheer prejudice, and from 
entire reliance on just what they read at that partlcu 



lar season from their party organs. It does seem as 
if such men cannot stay much longer in the Republi- 
can Party. 

The monopoly managers reasoned that if they only 
succeeded in 1880 in putting the bribe-taker into the 
Presidential chair they would have a comparath 
time thereafter. Their thought and policj was then 
to break up the Solid South — so-called bj the power 
of their combinations on railroads ;uid telegraphs in that 
section of the country. And the first illustration of 
their efforts may be seen in the State of Virginia. -Ma- 
hone is a good outcome of the Bchemings and invest- 
ments of Central Pacific Huntington and the telegraph 
monopoly managers in the Old Dominion. It remains 
to be seen whether the majority of the people of the 
South can be corrupted by the methods and the ma- 
chinery adopted or invented and employed by the na- 
bobs to whom we have referred. 



We are often told that there will be relief from the 
thraldom of the national monopolies through competi- 
tion. [The Republican and Independent organs are in- 
structed to talk this way, sometimes.] There has been 
occasionally, and there will or may be in the future, 
some slight relief, undoubtedly. But no speedy and ade- 
quate, no complete and permanent relief. The extor- 
tions of the telegraph company are so enormous that 
competition here and there — and probably, by and by, 
across the continent — is inevitable. But the reductions 
will be very small, under the rise of rivalry, at the 
best; and only temporary. There will be the old, old 
story of soliciting and securing stock or patronage — and 
then selling out. 

For instance, we pay 82 for a day dispatch and Si for 
a night dispatch of ten words from San Francisco to 
New York. Now, the tariff ought not to be at the very 
outside over 25 cents for twenty words for day and half 
that by night sending. That to begin with. And reduc- 
tion upon reduction, as business increased — as it would 
inevitably and immensely on such a tariff — until it came 
down to the point at which communications by mail 
would be practically superceded, between distant points, 
with reference to all business transactions. 

The true way, the quick way, in every respect the 
only proper way of relief, is by a Postal Telegraph. Ex- 
pectation elsewhere is foolish. 

Think of it. You can telegraph a twenty-word mes- 
sage from land's end to land's end in Great Britain for 
a sixpence. And further reductions are expected. And 
the cost of telegraph work extensively for business pur- 
poses is proportionately reduced - night messagl - going 
atlessthan a shilling for fifty words. Five hundred words 
of press dispatches for country papers, four shillings 
one dollar. And telegraphing costs more, construction 
of telegraph lines costs more, than in the United States. 
The cost of maintaining lines and of transmitting is far 
more in that more humid climate. There is no point 
from which you can view this matter without having 
your wonder raised to Inexpressible amazement at the 

ignorance and stolidity of the majority of OUT people — 

to say nothing of other qualities -as illustrated in sub- 
mission to the extortions of the telegraph monopoly, 

when a Postal Telegraph bill of a few plain 91 I 

would bring about the desired relief and reform within 
a very short period, 
And the advantage of such a system, and its ultimate 

■ beneficent results, are mam and TOSt, aside from the 

mere matter of convenience. Among the items. 
increase in wages for operators, and a demand for the 

services of twenty in. n and boys and girls in flu- busi- 
ness w i v ployed. 

And the telegraphic news columns of our metropol- 
itan papers bear evidence to. any discriminating news- 
paper man 01 an utter lack of an intelligl nt Byst( D 

comprehension on the part of the chiel managers ol the 

Associated Press. 

The San Francisco Daily Herald, In '69, for a few 
months, had its own special Eastern dispatches bj cj 
phei . i ■ supi i Lorit] ovi r t be Associated Press 

messages was so great that it had to he conceded bj 
every reader. [So far superior to the Orton-Simonton 
hash-up that the Western Union Telegraph Company, 
in very desperation, broke the contract it had made with 
the llerabl.] 



SOME ODDS AND ENDS OF PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE. 



Everything in the way of political news is twisted 
and tortured — where there is no suppression — in the in- 
terests of the Republican Party, which is practically the 
property of the great Telegraph and Railroad Com- 
panies. 

Is it not a good thing for you and me, and for the 
whole country, to have honest and able men in Con- 
gress? — as it is a good thing for us to have able and 
efficient generals at the head of our armies in time of 
war? Now, it is not only a fact that the best men in 
Congress and in the Senate of the United States within 
the past few years, have been machined out of these 
great deliberative bodies by the monopolists of the coun- 
try; but it is also a fact that now, as well as during the 
past ten or fifteen years, the people are not justly in- 
formed by the Associated Press dispatches from Wash- 
ington and elsewhere as to the proceedings in which 
our real statesmen are present. The words of Tilden 
and Thurman and Austin E. Blair and General Joseph 
Palmer and Andrew Curtin and Horatio Seymour, are 
not telegraphed broadcast over the land when thev 
make politital speeches or issue political addresses, un- 
less it is first ascertained that by some private enter- 
prise the addresses referred to will be generally dissem- 
minated by telegraph. Ana even then the speeches of those 
patriots will be garbled and shorn of half their states- 
eraft and strength. But for years we have had the 
vaporingsof Blaine and Conklingand Garfield, and crea 
tures of that infinitesimally small mental caliber and 
incontestibly rotten character, spread full upon the 
telegraph minutes all over the land, with eulogy piled 
on eulogy over their " eloquence " and their " wisdom " 
and their "foresight," etc., etc., etc., etc. The people of 
this country have not known what their strong men 
have said in strength and honor and justice, so far as 
the Associated Press and the Western I nion Telegraph 
Company could keep them from knowing it. The Dili- 
gent Cunning of Suppression is the long name for the 
the short Art that is one of the Tricks in their catalogue. 

This is sometimes termed an Age of Mediocrity. The 
monopolies are determined that no man of hrains and 
honesty shall receive a nomination even, in a party 
where there is any probability of success. And if such 
a man gets into the chief councils of the nation, they 
will misrepresent wherever they can, and suppress 
where they can, to the uttermost of their endeavors. 

Now, a Postal Telegraph would brush away the whole 
of this infamous business ; and the people would learn 
and realize with proper sentiments who their great and 
good men were. 

How dare Jim Simonton come into San Franciseo and 
talk about the Postal Telegraph as something that would 
be an injury to the country newspapers? What an ex- 
hibition of superlative mendacity ! In Great Britain 
the weekly newspapers have their special dispatches 
which they receive for a nominal sum. Give us a Postal 
Telegraph and the Modesto A'eivs, and the Colusa Sun, 
and the Yolo Democrat and the Petaluma Herald, and 
every other country newspaper in California, and 
throughout the country, would be able to receive, and 
in the natural course of events would take and publish, 
the latest authentic tidings in regard to great matters 
of public concern— receiving their telegraphic dispatches 
from their own private sources at the last hour before 
publication. Can these papers afford to do anything- of 
the kind now ? Why, this is one of the reasons why the 
country papers have been appealed to by me to take a 
lively interest in this matter. 

No, my dear sir; the people do not realize the extor- 
tions of the monopolists. These should be brought right 
home to them with facts and figures, day by day, so that 
they felt it on every occasion of patronage. 

Every time, sir, that you pay $7 for a round ticket 
from Modesto to San Francisco you are simply rob- 
bed of three dollars; every time you pay fifty cents for 
a dispatch from Modesto to San Francisco, you are rob- 
bed of from forty to forty-five cents. And so in pro- 
portion between almost all other towns and cities. 

An honest Railroad Commiseion, having the power to 
act, would provide that your fare from Modesto to San 
Francisco and back should not exceed $i. 

Pass a National Postal Telegraph bill, and the inevit 



able consequences will be that within two years there 
after, you will not have to pay over five cents for a ten- 
word message from Modesto to San Francisco. Now, 
you just think of this every time you are robbed by the 
tariff referred to. And talk to your neighbors about it. 
And understand whether your candidates for the Legis- 
lature — no matter who they are — are in favor of passing 
a set of resolutions favoring the Postal Telegraph. [Not 
whether they will introduce blackmail or Sleeping Res- 
olutions of the nature indicated.] Make a missionary 
of yourself — a citizen missionary — in regard to these 
matters. 

If every citizen in this State who reads this little 
pamphlet will follow this bit of advice, the next Legis- 
lature will see a sweeping majority there anxious and 
resolute to enact all, and pass all, resolutions with res- 
pect to this telegraph monopoly that come within the 
province of that deliberative body. And we will have 
a delegation in Congress unanimous for a Postal Tele- 
graph bill. 

The Great side-fret, just now, of the Call and Bulletin 
is in regard to the water monopoly. Occasionally they 
will babble about the gas. Here again they expect the 
people to forget. For years and years the Bulletin and 
Call supported these twin local monopolies ; owning 
stock to a large extent in one of the companies. Both 
sheets then ridiculed the idea of sinking artesian wells 
— which measure of relief, as against the Bensley and 
Spring Valley corporations, was first recommended to 
the people and put into practical operation by Jacob 
C. Beideman and myself. The managers of the Inde- 
pendent Press have no real care for the interests of the 
people.' They are simply and purely mercenary. They 
have not got one particle of the flavor of human sym- 
pathy in their arterial circulation. They are cold- 
blooded fishes. But they succeed — they have succeed- 
ed and they do now succeed, and far some time to come 
it seems probable that thev will continue to have a 
large measure of success in pretending to be champions 
of the people. 

Why, some of them have lied and lied and lied about 
the Postal Telegraph and concerning the Associated 
Press in a manner and in ways so flagrant as even to 
astound the oldest observer of their mendacity. Others 
have pretended to favor a Postal Telegraph until they 
were given dispatches; or while there was no danger of 
their editorials having any helpful effect on the move- 
ment. 

A great want in San Fraucisco to-day is a good Dem- 
ocratic evening paper. And among the marvel of mar- 
vels is the fact that that want is not responded to. 

Of course, if we had a Postal Telegraph, such papers 
as the Bulletin and the Call and the Alta and the Even- 
ing Pout of San Franoisco would be speedily superseded 
by decent and honest newspapers — real daily Journals. 



Yes, sir : we should travel more rapidly, as well as 
much more comfortably, by water. We should make 
the trip to Europe in three days. But the inventions 
that have led up to this "indication" towards this con- 
summation, have been suppressed. How long? 

The monopolies are continually egging on their or- 
gans to cry for a reduction of salaries; and the organs 
are accordingly grinding out new prophesies of a politi- 
cal millenium to be had by such reductions. It is every 
way in the interests of great corporations to have sala- 
ries of public officers put at the lowest figure. In that 
way it is reasonable for them to expect that a poor or- 
der of talent and a low sentiment of morality will be 
represented in public stations, in official positions. Men 
in offices which it is desirable to control in the interests 
of the great corporations are often directly pensioned 
by these corporations, and by that means absolutely 
owned by them. Sometimes it is sufficient for the pur- 
poses of these great tyrants, to get weak and 
timid men in office, whom they can bulldoze with their 
pugilistic pettifoggers, or mislead and dictate to by in- 
dependent newspaper editorials. 

The grasping avarice of these corporations extends in 
all directions. A few years ago a plan was laid to cap- 
ture some of the county offices in each county, by an ab- 
solute transfer of county official duties to corporation 



SOME ODDS AND ENDS OF PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE. 







agents. And the movement was adroitly started in a 

Democratic county. Some of the influential citizens 

in that county were bought up, and sonic prominent 

and conscientious men were deceived into favor for the 

nl . The plan was for a transfer of the moneys 

and the duties of the County Treasurers into the local 

banks or into the office of the express company (Wells, 

Fargo & Co. 's express now being owned principally i>.\ 

the Central Pacific Railroad Company.) And from that 

beginning- after a general, hoped-for adoption of the 

County Treasury transfer— the schemewas to bring at 

County Recorder and the County Surveyor di- 

un ler the same management. 

The talk was: "What is the use in paying a salary to 
a County Treasurer? The money can just as well be 
passed over by the Sheriff or the Collector into the local 
bank or the express company's office, and there kept, 
with a bond for safe-keeping, by clerks whose salaries 
will not be charged up against the county!" (The mo- 
nopolists having the use of the money for many months). 

Again: "We have plenty of civil surveyors lying around 
loose, whom we can easily detach for special services in 
the various counties, at a nominal charge to the coun- 
ty." So they would have the people's money and the 
power of profit thereof; and so they would have the 
county lines and subdivisions under their mapping; and 
so they would have had all the far-reaching power 
springing therefrom. 



That country is prosperous, that state is rich, where 
every industrious citizen is well-to-do. And the plan of 
the "monopolies is directly towards making the rich 
richer and the poor poorer. This is undisguised and 
avowed within their own circles. They despise the 
people— these managers of the monopolies and these 
managers and flunkies of the independent press. They 
aonot believe in a God or in a Judgment, though some of 
them pass church plates or serve as deacons or vestry, 
men;— and they all join in the grand jubilee chorus 
whenever they can succeed in cutting down the waires 
of a hard-working public officer. For as soon as official 
salaries are cut down, they have a fresh excuse for cut- 
ting down the wages of their clerks and bookkeepers, 
and engineers and superintendents. 



"Employ Chinese?" Yes. Charles Crocker once said 
at Reno, Nevada, in the presence of a nnmber of per- 
sons, shortly after the track was laid to that place, that 
within a few years the Central Pacific Railroad Company 
would have Chinese engineers and other Chinese train 
officers. 

In 1367-6S, ex-Cnited States Senator William Sharon 
i 1 to introduce Chinese into the mines on the 
Comstock. His purpose coming to the knowledge of the 
miners and preliminary preparations being made by 
them to resist the introduction of Mongolian labor, one 
of Sharon's agents declared to the Reverend Father 
(now Bishop) Manogue, of Virginia City, that the militia 
would be called out to sustain this movement to dis- 
place white laborers by coolies, and that Governor Blas- 
dcll hail been telegraphed to, at White Pine, with that 
that a company of regular United States sol- 
diers had been stopped at Reno with the declared de- 
sign of having them aid in this project. 

The Rev. Father Manogue told Mr. Sharon's book- 
keeper and next friend, N. A. H. Ball— (Mr. Ball notify- 
in- the Rev. Father voluntarily and advising him to aid 
in keeping the peace)- -that he could not be held in any 
ponsible for the actions of the white miners, in 
case the attempt was made to supplant them by coolies. 
And Father Manogue told Mr. Ball that he believed 
that if the attempt spoken of was made, there would not 
be a hoisting works building or a mill between Cedar 
Ravine, in Storey county, and Empire City, in Ormsby, 
that would not he in flames within twenty-four hours. 

Charles Crocker & Co . and Sharon & Co . dared not 
carry nut these plans. Hut their disposition was clearly 
manifested, and it illustrates the wish and sentiments of 
their kind as they exist unto this day. 



V.iu say that it is "funny" to read Hayes' attack on 
Conkling. Well, I suppose it is left to us to extract 
some enjoyment out of all such things. But to me it is 

such a humiliating spectacle that I can hardly afford to 
laugh at it. 



II ayes and ( '.inkling are both men nl' very small abili- 
ties. If you nave never heard Conkling speak, you 
have a disappointment in store: If you have pla< 
reliance on the high-sounding eulogies « hich the Ass,,. 
ciated Press agents have repeatedly bestowed upon 

him. There is mi teal logic in the man. Witness, in 

proof of this, his "reasoning" in his Bpeech at i 

York Aeadcnn of Music last summer, wherein heat- 
tacked the South i>\ a showing of exports ami ixn 
Even the New York Evening Post could notabide, hut 
had to ridicule, such false premises as he laid down ami 
such incorrect deductions as he drew even from his un- 
just 'and slanderous statements. And in point Ol 
his highest achievement is seen in constructing i 
orate sneer at someot ler Republican in power, whom 
although quite as likely a man as he is he chooses to 
denounce. Heisach ' fellow. Frank Pix- 

ley complains very bitterly of Ins treatment of Pi x ley at 
the Chicago Convention of 1880. Frank had ca 
complaint. Frank and Roscoe are of about th 
pattern in morals and manners and intellect; and after 
Frank's toadying i" Grant in San Francisco, Roscoe had 
probable cause for believing that he would be th, Gen 
eral's friend in the campaign. 

Conkling is not any smarter than Frank Pixie] or 
any of the turn-coat corporation flunkies in California. 
In" intellect he is not above Creed Raymond. Grove 
L. Johnson, Newton Booth or T. <;. Phelps. He is not 
a man of as much ability as Henrv Edgerton or Judge 
Sanderson — by no manner of means. 

Now, it seems to me that the talk of Haves against 
Conkling, as recently reported, is simply anothei 
disclosure of shatnelessness. Conkling knew that Hayes 
had no right to the Presidential chair. Hayes was in- 
formed at the time, he now states, that Conkling so 
expressed himtelf. And yet as a Senator of the I ni- 
ted States he sat still and unprotestingly witnessed, 
and even took a part in, the consummation of that 
great fraud. So did Roscoe Conkling; only great — if 
there be any bigness in his mind or manners onh great 
in infamy. 

As for Hayes! He must be an exceeding] 
brained creature, as weighed in the catalogue of "states- 
men!" Look at his opportunity! Opportunity as was 
never before given in this country to mortal man; such 
an opportunity as Caesar did not have. How insignifi- 
cant Hayes must appear in the conjunction of his intel- 
lect and conscience, when we consider that opportun- 
ity. And look at it even in the points of a wise 
selfishness. 

If he had said in 1877 to the Visiting Stab 
the Republican party and to all the people of the Uni- 
ted States: "No; I have not been elected to the office 
of chief executive of this nation. The man who has 
been chosen by the voters to fill that office is Samuel 
J. Tilden, of New York."— What a splendid immortality 
of renown would have been obtained by him, '<■• 
declaration of that which he knew to be true! Better 
than to have been President all the days Of his life. And 
what a patriotic service for his count i\ ! What immense, 
immediate moral and materia! benefits would have 
flowed from such an act of sup-erne honor. () blind, 
foolish man! 



Messrs. Hoar, andDawes, and Blaine, and chandler, 
and Rollins, and Ilawley, ami their colleagues in the 
national legislature from New England, «/<> not believe 
one syllable about the alleged atrocities in the South, 
to which tii. . pn I to refei with such holj horror 

and heart-felt sympathy. They know better. Pshaw! 
Of course they do! The leading politicians and prin- 
cipal clergymen of New England, are to blameforthe 
abused nun, is ol ipon thousands of good poo 

pie in that section of the conn try who regularly vote the 
Republican ticket, and who ,/„ believe I he Anna Pinker- 
ton stories. 

When ■ STew England and find a man who 

i, liberal™ his ideas, and tu mi gritj conjoined with 
real independence ol thought, and industry in pi rsonal 

.lion as t,, political mailer-, you I'm,! a I >, mo 

crat. 

l know that nine out of ever] ten of tin- leading Dem- 
ocrats in New England, to-day, are men who were either 
., in the Republican ranks ,,r He- i nion ranks 
during tin' war activi d therein or 

of such men. 



10 



SOME ODDS AND ENDS OF PERSONAL CORRSPONDENCE 



Yes ; it does not seem possible that another National 
campaign can be conducted on the sectional cry. And 
yet, that is what we said four years ago. 

Talk about nun in New Hampshire voting for General 
Jackson twenty 5 ears after he was dead; why, there are 
hundreds and hundreds of good people in New England 
who will continue to vote the Last War just so long as 
the monopolists can keep such creatures— such small, 
lying creatures— as Hoar and Dawes and Rollins in seats 
in the chief councils of the nation, and in the opening 
speech-desk of the New England State conventions. 



A Postal Telegraph would break the backbone of sec- 
tionalism as an element in national politics. A Postal 
Telegraph would speedily result in informing the people 
as to the comparative littleness of such creatures as 
Dawes and Hoar and Rollins and Chandler and Blaine— 
as well as serve to meet with instant, nation-wide ref- 
utation their ''Southern outrage" falsehoods. 

Because honest journalists could afford to start news- 
papers, and have direct and correct intelligence from the 
Capitol at Washington, and full and just reports as to 
the public consultations and debates and arguments ; 
and"direct and correct tidings from every point of alleg- 
ed excitement or interest. 



The People now do not know the greatness of their 
great men, or the feebleness of the so-called political 
giants of t.lie day. Such men as George W. Julian and 
Austin E. Blair and Jos E. Palmer— O, I have not space 
to "-o through the catalogue that is familiar to my daily 
thoughts— such men are driven out of politics or driven 
out of public life, driven out of Congress, and their 
words and actions are hidden from the people, by the 
instrumentalitv of the telegraph monopoly and its side 
departments— including all its Independent and Repub- 
lican organs. 

If Daniel Webster was alive, in all his intellectual 
strength and glory, to-day, and a member of the United 
States Senate, and should get up on the floor of that 
Council Chamber and, with his masterly method of 
statement, expose and denounce the telegraph and rail- 
road monopolies, and argue, in his ponderous way, in 
favor of measures for the emancipation of the people 
from the tyranny of these monopolies, there would be 
two or three little paragraphs concerning his speech 
telegraphed abroad to the Associated Press— conjoined 
with the statement that "the old man is breaking down;" 
that it was evident that his faculties were sadly impair- 
ed; that there was great expectation and great disap- 
pointment in the Senate and in the galleries respecting 
his speech. 

And there would be, at the same time, columns de- 
voted to Hoar's and Blaine's and Edmunds' "exhaustive 
and overwhelming reply to the pragmatical old gentle- 
man:' —imagining the least of puffs, puffs, puffs for such 
as Edmunds is, and the least of indecency in expressions 
of contempt for Webster and respecting his speech. 

And at the very next session of the Massachusetts 
Legislature which had a Senator to elect, under the 
force of monopoly bribery, and intimidation and bland- 
ishments, some such crawling, sniveling, whining, sneak- 
ing, lying creature as Dawes or Hoar would be sent to 
the'National Legislature, to snivel and shuffle and "rat- 
tle around" m the place which the God-like Daniel had 
majestically and magnificently filled. 

You press me to know what my confidence is or what 
my expectations are in regard to the anti-monopoly 
movement, in its largest sense considered. That is, 
whether I have any real hope or expectation of a future 
victory by the people over these tyrants this side of 
Revolution '.' I must confess that 1 am not as sanguine 
of the future in this respect as I was up to the defeat of 
such a man as Hancock by such a man as Garfield. Still, 
it seems to me that the burden will grow so insupport- 
able that some measure of relief will be adopted, through 
the Democratic party, before another four years shall 

To tide along and tide along— meanwhile growing 
stronger and stronger -is what the monopolists now 
seek. Their art is to amuse the people with sideshow 



issues and excitements; and to try and make them be- 
lieve that the political millenium can be reached by 
reducing the salaries of public officers to a nominal sum. 
Their agents will raise and inflate local issues about 
comparatively trifling extortions, by local companies in 
San Francisco and elsewhere on this coast, just before 
every election— so as to blind and divert the people. 
And, if necessary, such men as George Wm. Curtis and 
Cari Schurz will' be instructed by their owners to whirl 
around aud make a new pretense of sympathy with 
the people and hostility to monopoly domination. Any- 
thing to keep the real power in the hands of the avowed 
or recently -pi edged servants of the Rings. The avow- 
ed agents of the railroad and telegraph monopolies 
will make their influence felt, with money in hand, 
in regard to candidates for important office in any 
party or organizations that have the present promise 
of success. The George Wm. Curtises and Carl Schurzs 
and Whitelaw Reids, and Frank Pixleys will, mayhap, 
denounce Republican candidacies (put up to be defeated) 
and advocate railroad and telegraph monopoly " Demo- 
crats." 

Meanwhile, there will be thousands of blatherskite 
demagogues who will preach to scores of expectant of- 
fice holders that, no doubt, within three or four 
years, the great i|iiestion before the American people 
may be, " Whether the monopolies or the people shall 
rule in this country?" But, at the present time, the 
great question is as to who should ue Auditor of the 
county ! 

All helping to tide along; perhaps unto that day when 
Relief and Reform will be impossible— save by 1776 
methods. 



You say that George Gorham announces that the rail- 
road companies were against the nomination of Grant 
at Chicago. 1 have always felt convinced that that was 
so. But, of course, Gorham does not give the right 
version of the matter. 

The difficulty with Grant, as a railroad monopoly man, 
was, that he could not be considered entirely reliable 
as a direct servant. 

Blaine was the railroad companies' man. And, when 
they could not get Blaine. Garfield was their choice. 
With Blaine, it was a straight road— between the railroad 
and telegraph quarters and the White House. With 
Grant, there might be some difficulty, on account of his 
obstinacy in nominating Cabinet officeis, and such little 
matters," in which the corporations would be interested 
during his Administration! Not because of any sus- 
pected latent hostility to monopolies— nothing of that 
kind— certainly not on account of any ever declared 
hostility;— but because— on account of some " whim " — 
he might insist on putting in "the wrong man in the 
right place "—some Bristow or Devens, who would not 
be entirely at the command of Jay Gould and President 
Green and Jim Simonton and Huntington and Stanford 

It was a matter of preference, of absolute preference. 
The monopolists, the railroad monopolists especially, 
have been nursing up Blaine for years and years. He is 
preeminently their mini. Unsuccessful in their efforts 
to secure Blaine' s.noniination— (and the monopoly agents 
who worked for his success at Chicago must not be 
blamed too much by their masters— for the country is 
large, and a nationa'l nominating convention is unwieldy 
—and the railroad and telegraph companies had not, as 
yet, got any of the Southern States well in hand)— fail- 
ing to secure Blaine's nomination, they succeeded in 
obtaining the next best thing— G-arfield,— Garfield at the 
head of the Presidential ticket. 

No intelligent, unprejudiced and honest citizen will 
undertake to question for a moment the fact, that all 
the powers of the monopolies were exercised in favor of 
Garfield and against Hancock, 

The monopolists are cunning in having such papers as 
the San Francisco Chronicle — directed to profess anti- 
monopoly sentiments during three years, and then giv- 
ing ail the " benefit of their circulation " in favor of 
the candidate of the monopolists for the chief executive 
chair. . 

This ought to be among the simplicities by this time ; 
and no intelligent person should be deceived or influ- 
enced by the branded sheet, or "the like of it." 



SOME ODDS AND ENDS OF PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE. 



11 



No; Conkling never has be n an anti-monopolist. He 

if the gold ring and of the railroad 

ring, and preeminently of the telegraph ring; voting 

even against allowing railroa raph linestocarrj 

jes when there was ;i threat 

ition from th it sourc ■: and 1 1 i ^ present 

and the p of his flunkiesabout anti on 

sentiment on his part, is supremely audacious and ab- 

onkling, and B ick, of Kentucky, have b i 
strong pillars of the telegraph m mopolj foi 
years past in the Senate of the United States; and, in 
return for his servj frapb Companj have 

puffed, puffed, puffed Conkling on every occasion. 

ii that class of men who hive swim- from 
the Prol iction and Internal Improvements doctrines of 
ultra-Whiggism to the other site of the circle. Uid 
the telegrap i mon ipoly have nursed him tenderly and 
shrewdly as one of their next friends in tie- I nit d 

i is th,- railroad's p 
is the eh e • of the telegraph devil-fish— in the Demo- 
cratic party. 



'•A Postal relegraph"is an original Democratic pro- 
position, as shown in my lecture on the subject. 

No. There was not any bribery by Fair in Nevada. 

Then sityforany. All the hurrah on that 

3 gotten up for the purpose of heading off 

id In regard to the use of money in the state 

of California, which resulted in the election of the Presi- 

al Company monopoly to the Si 
of the United States. Nevada is naturally a Democratic 
State. Take away the corruption of .money and Federal 
patronage from that little commonwealth, and its vote 
would have shown a majority of thousands instead of 
hundreds, for General Hancock. I know the State well. 
ir Fair had no occasion to contribute anything 
more than a reasonable amount to the legitimate cam- 
paign fund of the Democratic party in that State. He 
was known to be a very wealthy man. 

Bill Sharon was of the opinion, doubtless, that Senator 
Fair might spend larg-e sums in the contest, and knowing 
that Nevada was legitimately a Democratic State, and 
that Senator Fair could spend as much money as he, if 
he was so disposed, in such a canvass, Sharon drew out; 
and, keeping his purse-strings closed, the natural result 
was a Democratic victory, in spiteof the Federal pap in- 
fluence, and the money that wis tossed in from the out- 
side General Fund of the monopolists. 

You know very well that the same thing m t, 
of the State of California. Permit the people of this 
State to once vote uninfluenci d by bribery andintimida- 
tion and promises of Federal offices, and they would poll a 
Democratic majority of from ii'j.OOO to 40,000 votes. 

The corruption that resulted in sending the President 
of the Fur Seal Company to Washington, as Senator, 
should have been investigated. That is to say, an at- 
tempt should have been faithfully made in the California 
Legislature to investigate this matter. I am not pre- 
pared to sav that such an investigation was prev< 
or warded off by the lies in regard to the Nevada elec- 
tion, which I have referred to. But those lies were 
studiously invented and circulated with that very pur- 
pose in view. 

- It is, indeed, from one standpoint, a threat man • 

dd insist upon their extortions 

and go into all their rotten schemes in order to keep 

them i;i'. ff they would charge reasonable rates they 
would in tin- end— within a year— make, at least, as 
muchmone; a- they do now. and would 
by the people as public benefactors. But they are such 

hogs er the dollar and a half of 

to-day and ter J ield "t the coming year— as 

compared with the present receipts. 



If we had a postal telegraph, there would soon be 
twelve persons nun, women and children— employed, 

where there is now one person on the roll of the V> cst- 

ern Union Telegraph Company. And the demand tor 
operators and workmen would rapidly increase, with 
nance at good wages, and with clear opportuni- 
ties lor inventors and the more skillful emplo, 



Suppose the railroad charged one-haU ii i 
from here to the East. Three pass mgi 
be required daily, wh n oands ot 

\,,d [nth - - :i 1 the railroa I company would be 
the gainer.while thousands would find em 
business from witho it, from other portion 
would poui us with an immi 

volume. 



Competition maj ulthx Nl ,,u ' wftv 

of redo railroads, for a 

short time; comp u re '"" 

cing telegraph tolls within : an ' 

mor.! inexpensive 1 c, will probably bring 

about this result. But what th 

is not a slight or a I"--'' ' ; '- out "" '" '"'■ 

mous <m I a p Tin ' ■'■''■ 

tortion. Competitl '■'"■ 

word di 

down to si, or to 50 ' MX 

wars. But what th oppor- 

tunity and right fixed at a nnximum— of sending a 
twenty-word dispat e continent for not more 

than 25 cents; so I iriffed at the beginningof the Postal 
Telegraph operations. And then the law should pre- 
aeriOi reductions in proportion to the income; should 
(and would, undera faithful a Iministration by the Dem- 
ocratic party) soon bring the tolls down so that tor .". 
cents a ten-word message could be transmitted from our 
Land's End to Land's End, 

It was undoubtedly proper that the Congress of tin- 
United States should require the Central Pacific Railroad 
Company and the Union Pacific Railroad Company to 

pay in tiie amount- which the Thurman bill provided, 
o a" their indebtedness to the Government. This mi 
ure ought to have been passed, but another measure 
should have been H 

There is provision in the original Pacific Railroad bill, 
under which the fates c ' these two 

national roads one half, by a single strol 
lation. And, for years past, it has only required tie- 
presence of one resolute, honest, energetic man in either 
House of Congress to have m wle I he Representatives of 
the people, and the people themselves, understand this 
fact. A majority of Senatorsand Congressmen are ig- 
norant of the privilege and opportunity that they have 
had in this respect. "The railroad companies have been 
very careful in making sure that no man was 
this coast who would introduce such a bill, or advocate 
it vigorously and earnestly, if it was introduced. 

Yes; I was amused on reading the declamation of 
Da<'«-ett of Nevada, about anti-monopoly. When 1 lived 
in that State, he thought I did wrong in warning and 
urging legislation- (18641 1I8O8) inst l! u I road Com- 

pany tyranny. I h ipe that hi 

dated with him are sincere in this titude 

on this question, and will maki i I oi sincerity when- 
ever reformatorj efforts in legislation come to a local- 
izing point. 

Yes- I can give you any amount of illustration of the 
stupendous extortions of the Western Union Telegraph 
Company. As long agoas L879, 1 procured 
the most accompli* ms in the countrj agen- 

tlem I in building lines on this coast the 

following estimate for the construction ot a hue .,1 
land telegraph from San Franeiseo to Omaha— a two 
wire line: 

s.m Francisto to Sacranu nto, per mile: 

Poles 

Insulators , 5 

Wire 

Labor 10 

$162x117 ti 

Sacramento to Reno, per m 

Poll - 

irs *» 

Wire..". 

Labor _JW 

$217x164 1 



12 



SOME ODDS AND ENDS OF PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE. 



Reno to Omaha, per mile : 

Poles $ 56 

Insulators 7 

Wire 120 

Labor 20 

$203x1,573 miles— $319,319 

Total cost of line completed from San Francisco to 
Omaha, $370,521. 

The total cost of instruments and office-connecting 
wire will not exceed $60 for each office. 

Line consists of two thoroughly insulated wires on 
same set of poles. Poles capable of carrying eight addi- 
tional wires. 

On this line, worked to full capacity for twenty hours 
per day, at one cent per word, the receipts would be 
$710,800 per annum. Worked one-half the time at one 
cent per word, the gross receipts in one year would 
nearly pay the original cost. Worked one-fourth of the 
time— five hours per day — the income, in one year would 
pay all expenses, and twenty-eight per cent, per annum 
on the investment;— the tariff, mark you, being one 
cent per word! » 



The bonanza people have an opportunity to invest 
their money in such a way as to secure the benedictions 
of the people and reap large profits. Let them extend 
their narrow gauge roads throughout the State and 
across the center of the continent, and put the freights 
and fares at a reasonable rate, and, while they will get 
good interest for their money, they will not fail of that 
reward which comes in the form of a recognition of a 
true and generous business enterprise by the long-suf- 
fering American public. 



It is in "the nature "of the monopolist, according 
to experience and observation, to co-operate and coal- 
esce with his fellow, when that fellow monopolist gets 
so large and powerful that there is a real rivalry in the 
business of the twain. " How long will it be after the 
new trans-continental roads are completed across the 
centre and north of the continent before they combine 
openly?" Not a long time, in all probability, judging 
from the past . But we should seek for legislation and 
a strong public sentiment meanwhile, to combat the 
projects of such union of interests. Can't we make 
.some of our rich railroad men appreciate the excellence 
of justly conducted railroad enterprises, by force of pub- 
lic sentiment— as well as hold them to fair terms by the 
iron word of law ? 

Yes ; some people talk of the corruption of our Courts 
by the monopolies as if it was a matter of recent occur- 
rence or development ! 

The monopolists have been electing judges— forcing 
their nomination upon the Conventions — for at least 
twelve years last past. And they have got their crea- 
tures in most of the United States District Courts of 
the land. It is notorious that the Central Pacific Rail- 
road Company bought votes in the California Legisla- 
ture, years ago, with the promise of U. S. District Judge- 
ships in adjacent territories. And the Central Pacific 
Railroad Company was able to fulfill some of its prom- 
ises; and it now has some things in territorial judge- 
ships, before which, with a parade that is even ludi- 
crous, they roll their directors' car, full of railroad law- 
yers ! 

Well ; perhaps it is necessary, or at least expedient, 
to marshal this display of legal talent in one of their cases 
in order to hoodwink some people. These monopolists 
are fearful; "uneasy lies the head that wears the 
crown." 



One good, honest, uprisht and thoroughly informed 
Democratic majority in both houses of Congress, co-op- 
erating with a Democratic President, would accomplish 
all the anti-monopoly reform that is needed, and that I 
have outlined. It can all be done in one session. The 
Postal Telegraph bill need not be many sections long. 
I have shaped a model many times. And the enactment 
of a plain, simple bill of two sections would give us 
reasonable passenger fares across the continent forth- 
with . 



Anything to keep the people's minds away from learn- 
ing and understanding, fully comprehending, and hon 
estly and inflexibly resolving, and wisely putting reso- 
lutions into practice through competent and courageous 
and conscience-bound representatives. Anything, any 
device, any hurrah, any funny or side-show business, 
that the national monopolies may lice and grow fatter 
and fatter and stronger and stronger. Any Kearney 
that has got a new yell for reform, or any independent 
sheet that has got a new groan or howl for Reform else- 
where, can walk up to the captain's office and get small 
change for such bamboozling business. 



Yes ; I know there is some pretense of concentrating 
anti-monopoly sentiment through anti-monopoly 
leagues— expressly so-called. That is <t device of the ene- 
my. Honest men are to be trapped again by the George 
William Curtis breed of hypocrites. There will be no 
adequate and speedy relief accomplished through those 
organizations. If the people do not get it through the 
Democratic party, they will never get legislative relief 
until after Revolution. I do admit that we have some 
black sheep in our fold in Congress, as a matter of 
course; but they are few and far" between, thank God. 

In the character of the majority of the men in the 
Democratic party in Congress during the last six years, 
I have had a high and abiding confidence. What they 
have omitted to do cannot be put to the account of a 
lack of a right disposition and pure hearts. Noble has 
been the record of the majority of the Democratic Con- 
gressmen and Senators since 1873. 

I doubt not that if there had been a man from this 
coast, during this period, to have stood up in either 
House, with the information and the will and the pow- 
er of speech requisite for a commanding statement in 
regard to our railroad and telegraph monopolies here, 
the cause of anti-monopoly in this country would have 
had an immense start forward ; if a comprehensive and 
conclusive victory would not have been absolutely won. 



This is not a new-born zeal with me. The letters which 
I have given elsewhere in this little pamphlet, disclose 
that fact. And in the Nevada Senate, on many occasions, 
I prophesied all the woes of railroad monopoly thrall- 
dom to the people of this coast that have come upon 
them in the succeeding fifteen years — showing plainly, 
at that time, the way in which ail this pictured tyranny 
and all this flood-tide of corruption in politics, caused 
by these tyrants, could be obviated, prevented and ren- 
dered impossible. 

I knew the Stanfords, and the Crockers and their as- 
sociates. I knew them, warp and filling. I knew what 
was to be expected from them. If they once got their 
hands on the throats of the people, I knew — and I pro- 
phesied in a speech which was reported by Mr. Cutter, 
and of which I have the short-hand notes— that the 
Railroad Company would be a great and the corrupting 
lobby power in California and Nevada; that the people 
would be charged fifty per cent above a reasonable rail- 
road tariff, and their State and Federal legislators in- 
duced not to pass anti-monopoly laws. 

I could have been Congressman, I could have been 
United States Senator, if I had held 1113- peace on these 
topics or agreed to act under monopoly dictation. But 
those places are barren to me if I have to go there 
knowing that legislators are elected with the money 
of the Central Pacific Railroad Company, or that their 
votes are bought and paid for with the money of the 
Central Pacific Railroad Company, in my behalf. Life 
is too short for these things — if you put the moral con- 
sideration no higher than that. I believe in a God and 
a future judgment upon every man's actions. And I 
consider every man who takes a public office, knowing 
that it is bought and paid for with thejmoney'of corpora- 
tion-monopoly, as no better, in any respect, than the 
traitor or thief who is not hedged about with the "re- 
spectabilities " which these monopoly monarchs enlist 
or build up! 

I have no confidence in, and no respect for, the public 
representative or the judge upon the bench who talks 
anti-monopoly and then goes and dines and wines with 
the monopoly corporation masters, in their palaces; eat- 
ing and drinking and making merry with these dukes of 
plunder and debauchery, on Nob Hili or Fifth avenue. 



SOME ODDS AND ENDS OF PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE. 



13 



We must not speak plain about these things ! Oh, no! 
We hum not whisper about them. Oh, indeed, many 
is the man in San Franeiseo who pretends to be a man, 
who will cry " hush," on the street, if you lisp, before 
the nominating conventions meet, your hostilities to 
these monopolies — you being known as an earnest 
anti-monopoly man. 01 course these same shadows ot 
humanity, skeletons of manhood, will get up in Work - 
ingmen's Conventions, and Dennis Kearny Conventions, 
and stalwart Conventions, and denounce monopoly. 
And some will crawl barefooted into Democratic Con- 
ventions, and loudly proclaim their anti-monopoly sen- 
ments. And then they will take a free pass and two or 
three thousand dollars and go to Cincinnati, and try and 
secure the nomination of that cold-blooded piece of rail- 
road and telegraph monopoly, known as Stephen J. 
Field. 

You must not use harsh words about these railroad 
kings. You must not name their doings, with an op- 
probrious epithet for the doers, if you do, you are not 
a gentleman ! 

How shall you speak of them, if you speak of them 
at all '.' Have they not robbed this people'.' Have they 
not corrupted our legislators'.' Have they not nomina- 
ted and secured the election of creatures as Governors, 
and corrupted this common wealth ? Do they not own 
men, body, boots and breeches, whq are the nominal 
representatives of the people, in the National Legisla- 
ture at Washington? Shall you say nothing about 
them.' Nothing but sweet words ! Because the3' are 
church deacons and vestrymen, and what not ? And give 
good gifts to lawyers and doctors and ministers, who 
have passed into places or positions of influence on the 
strength of anti-monopoly sentiments, and then sold 
out to these lordly millionaires '! 

I tell you, sir ! When you pay fifteen cents for a fer- 
rv passage from San Francisco to Oakland, you are 
robbed of ten cents. When you pay fifty cents for a 
ten-word message from San Francisco to Sacramento, 
you are robbed of forty-five cents. And so you can go 
through the tariff. 

Those charges should have been brought down to a 
reasonable standard by honest legislatures, National 
and State. They are not so reduced, because Legisla- 
tures, National and State, are corrupted by the men 
who take the benefit of these enormous exactions and 
put them into treasuries out of which they can and do 
buy the professed representatives of the people. 

Is that plain enough ? 



No; I don't speak asplainlv or as fully as I ought. I 
have to bear the expense of my own speech, whatever 
it may be. I cannot give publication to all details with 
which I wish the public was supplied. But to the utter- 
most of my ability and opportunity, I speak. 

The monopolists and their creatures in the Republi- 
can party are determined not only to rob and to rule to- 
day, but they are determined to write history for the 
coming generations. 

One thing I shall do — and that I shall do without a 
grain of personal ill feeling in the premises. However 
insignificant it may now appear, I will announce it — and 
woe unto me if I do it not : 1 will leave memoirs after 
me that will give the true history of mauy men in Cali- 
fornia who are now high in public honor or public con- 
fidence, but who, for their treason to the State and 
their help to tyrants, deserve nothing but public execra- 
tion. And when we shall have all passed away, let my 
children or my children's children — if time shall con- 
tinue so long — use a wise discretion in spreading them 
before what I hope will be an interested and appre- 
ciative and grateful people. 

If we had a Postal Teleuraph, every Democratic paper 
could, and naturally, and, you may say, necessarily 
would have its own reporters at Washington, New York 
and other main points ot [TEWS. What a different (be- 
cause correet) idea the people would soon have of dis- 
cussions and orders in our National Legislature. Even 
the Associated Press, while it lingered in existence, 
would be compelled, by force of such clear and endur- 
ing rivalry, to occasionally approximate a fair report. 
' Undoubtedly Conkling had a bargain with 



Garfield at Mentor. Of course, it was not put in writ- 
ing, and, perhaps, it was not explicitly staled in detail 

in words, but it was perfectly well understood by both 

parties; and, on the strength of it. Conkling used his 
usual methods for and in Behalf of the perjurers' and 

bribe-takers' ticket in New York and elsewhere. Of 
course it is the fact, that Garfield has added to the in- 
iquity of the original covenant, the fact (call it sin or 

no) of treachery ana ingratitude. He may think to 
hide the former by the virtue which some will attach to 
the latter. 

He " goes back " on Conkling, but not on the monop- 
olists. He is true to the holders of the great outside 
cash-boxes of corruption. 

The Dorsey Banquet was a great champagne-fed 
chuckle over the success of the confessed corruption by 
which the State of Indiana -an admittedly "Democratic 
State'' — was put in the roll of "Radical," in October 
and November, 1SS0. A more unblushing exhibition of 
the moral degradation of the Republican Part; could 
not have been prepared. Of course Garfield's i 
ulations were there. 

Compare the leaders of the Radical party with the 
leaders of the Democrtic party, anel, if you are an honest, 
intelligent man, you cannot hesitate as to your associa- 
tions in party lines. Can you imagine Hon 
mour, or Horace Greeley, or Samuel J. Tilden, or Win- 
field S. Hancock asking for party aid from branded 
thieves, or sitting at or sending sympathetic messages to 
such a banquet as the Dorsey affair ! 
O, yes, they will make much of every such thing. Gar- 
field is not a scholar, in the higher sense of the word. 
But, of course, he will be declared to be a great linguist, 
and all that. One sentence from the opening pages of 
Ollendorff's German Teacher is enough for the Asso- 
ciated Press. " He speaks German like a native." lb- 
said, in parrot tone, "Welcome all," in German ! 0, 
Heavens ! what a linguist. [What did he say to the 
Boat Club after election i It was not "welcome all."] 
Garfield made two gross mistakes in his speech at Chi- 
cago, which the telegraph boy corrected. [See National 
Telegrapher. ] Garfield said that Xerxes led tie 
but the telegraph boy knew better. 

You feel the convenience of the postal cards and the 
city street -corner P. O. Box. It comes home I 
poor man's door and heart. Would you have the tariff 
turned back to 16 cents on eash letter, and then give 
the practical monopoly of carrying to a private' expri -s 
company? When you write a postal, and immi 
appreciate the cheapness and comfort of the dispatch by 
mail, reflect on the immensely greater advantage of com- 
munication you would have if your words were to be 
taken from the green letter-beix, or at the Postoffice 
station, and forthwith transmitted by telegraph 
relatives or friends, your dear old mother, or your eh ing 
school or college comrade, now in the East ! (or your 
lass or lover !) This is an advantage of civilization, 
under our general government, you should now have; 
that vou would have with a Postal Telegraph. 

There is no originality in J. A. Garfield. I have read 
his speeches and letters — prompted thereto, of course, 
by the candidacy and the laudations of the man. Most 
of what he has written on political matters is as insipid 
as chalk. He would not supply with his whole cranium 
the material for the northeast corner of such nun as 
Tilden, or Thurman, or Austin E.Blair. His greatest 
point seems to have been the quotation of some Bank 
Ring sophistry, and then striking an attitude and chal- 
lenging: "Lei tne gentleman wrestle with that, if he 
can." And this, over and over and over again, u<l 
nauseam. He is a mediocre man, but most distin- 
guished in his utter and educate', 1 obsequiency to the 
nionev and monopoly powers of the land. But Garfield 

has sueh a brilliant war record! In 1866 the Radical 
house of Harper Bros, published " Personal B 
tions of Distinguished Generals," by Win. P. Q. shanks, 
a war correspondent, in which Sherman and Grant and 
other Generals are highly extolled, see page 266 of 
that book, for, incidentally, a mention of Garfield and 
an old woman, at CWckamauga— two miles from the 
field of battle— guessing where the fighting wc 



The fact to which vou refi nratelv stated 

in this way, 1 think : The people were deceived into per- 



14 



SOME ODDS AND ENDS OF PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE. 



mitting Sherman and Garfield and Morton and Sargent 
& Co. to swindle them out of the rightful President 
ol L876 so. There can lie now no sort of question with 
anj Bane man that Samuel J. Tilden was duly elected 
President of the United States in 1876. Although his 
words during the canvass, and between the election and 
the seating of the hypocrite and taker of stolen goods, 
Hayes, were unreported or misreported, as far as the 
managers of the Associated Press thought it pi a I 
them to suppressor garble or altogether misstate in this 
connection, it did come to our ears even by the tardily 
delivered telegraphic message — (bound to conic in due 
course of mail, and therefor allowed to leak through the 
monopolists' tub of " news")— it did come to our 
edge that Samuel J. Tilden said and sought to proclaim 
that the people should assemble in mass meetings in 
their respective towns and cities,and hear the fact 
and formally demand the inauguration as President of 
the man who was elected to that office. Necessarily fol- 
lowing, consequent upon such meetings, there would 
have been an effective organization of the people in sup- 
port of such demand ; and the outcome would have 
been the installation of Samuel J. Tilden in the Chief 
Executive chair of this Union. 

The Democracy of Indiana began to act upon this sim- 
ple and sage ami sufficient suggestion from the man who 
had been elected President. Then the " O hush !" and 
"Ohush!" " sh— sh— sh^-sh !" began. All the man- 
agers of the Independent Press — some of whom had 
blurted out a confession of the most obvious fact — the 
most obvious fact in the world— that Samuel J. Tilden 
had been elected President of the United States — I say 
that all the independent Press managers took a new fee 
and began to bawl " sh — sh— sh— sh !" — being very noisy 
in requesting everybody else to keep very quiet. Espe- 
cially, with great condescension of manner and emphasis, 
with the very air of magnanimity, these venal, cunning 
creatures turned their special appeals to "' leading Dem- 
ocrats," as they fondled the men whom they dom- 
inated, and begged them to be quiet, and to see to it 
that no one of the rank and file made noisy protest 
against the robbery that was in course of perpetration. 
More than this. Worse than this, infinitely. The 
avowed Radical and the Independent Press m 
editorially endorsed the lies of the Associated Press 
Telegraphic column in this : The telegrams from one 
portion of the Union to the other bore the statement 
daily that the Democrats here and the Democrats there 
were, in mind and heart, indifferent upon the question 
as to who should receive the votes of Loui.v, 
Florida and South Carolina in the Electoral College. 
The people in the several States were, in great measure, 
deceived as to the sentiments of the Democracy in the 
other portions of the Union, by this infamous misrepre- 
sentation of popular judgment and desire. The De- 
mocracy in Indiana were informed. that the Democracy 
in California desired nothing but peace, peace, peace, 
and were only fearful lest some imprudent, hot-headed, 
prominent Democrat should propose organization in an 
effective way for the purpose of seeing to it that the 
Jefferson of our generation was inaugurated in the offiee 
to which he had been elected. Those who called or 'at- 
tended the few meetings that were held in Indiana were 
specially informed by the lying Associated Press that 
their acts were wholly disapproved by the Democracy 
elsewhere. Every effort on the part of honest Demo- 
crats in any large town or city to secure action in ac- 
cordance with the adviee of the President-elect, was 
watched, and, so far aspossible, thwarted. 

Unfortunately, most unfortunately, by bribery or in- 
timidation, or some sort of blandishment, the monopo- 
lists found it no difficult matter to bring to their aid in 
this infamous business men who had been accepted as 

le irs in the Democratic Par*y— many of whom had 

held, or still occupied, high positions' of honor and 
trust, in which they had been placed by the Dei 
Conventions and Democratic votes. 

Finding that it was impossible to get our committees 
in this city— at least it was imposiible forme to secure 
the desired action— to call a mass meeting for the pur- 
pose above indicated, I engaged Dashaway Hall, and 
wrote out notices for publication for a meeting of this 
kind. I showed my form of notice to Colonel Hoge and 
D. B. Woolf and Henry George. I was uoing to the 
printing office when Mr. George met me in the hallway 
of the Supreme Court building. He said he would 



co-operate with me, but he thought it best to try and 
get some of the members of the State Committee to 
take the initiative. I told him that I had already made 
an appeal to individual members there in vain ; but I 
was willing he should make a similar application. I was 
always willing to take a back seat, and I have always 
paid deference to regularly constituted authorities when 
they came anywhere near doing their duty. 

VVell, Mr. George went to the Cosmopolitan Hotel, 
where it had been announced that State Committee men 
and other prominent men would have a consultation 
with respect to calling public meetings for the purpose 
before stated— consultation about this matter especially, 
as well as about some other matters. George came back 
from this consultation gathering, at which William Irwin 
and Eugene Casserly were present, in a state of utter 
demoralization. " Why," said George to me, " they 
laughed at me ! They said it was the most ridiculous 
thing they ever heard ! Everything was going along all 
right, and nothing could be more unwise or absurd !" 
I understood either from George, or from some one else, 
that Pickering of the Call was either present at that 
meeting; or had his hushing adviee quoted thereat. (If 
Tilden "had been inaugurated, this old dye-pot would 
have professed to have been his next friend, I suppose. 
But the idea of taking his advice on such a question! 
There is absurdity for you — unless you attach a sinister 
motive to the action at that time and in that place of 
William Irwin and Eugene Casserly and other so-called 
" leaders"— present and approving.) 

I was froing on to hold a meeting, notwithstanding 
the State Capitol lodgers had met the mind of Picker- 
ing in the hush business. Just then Leander Quint 
came to me and said that E. D. Sawyer— an old line and 
well known Republican leader — would preside at such a 
meeting, it being agreed that I was to make the open- 
ing and principal speech of the evening. I told Judge 
Quint that I was more than willing that some one else 
should have charge of such a meeting, and that others 
should speak to the exclusion of myself, providing it 
was an up and-up Tilden-inauguration-demand assem- 
blage. And Judge Quint told" me that that was pre- 
cisely what Judge Sawyer desired. I put my testi- 
monial of respect in every letter that I write about this 
matter, for Judge E. D. Sawyer and E. T. Batturs, of 
this city, both of whom were ready to act at a public 
meeting, at which resolutions should be passed declaring 
that Tilden had been elected, and must be seated as 
President of the United States. Then, persuaded by 
the plea that the Electoral Commission "settled all 
things," this plan was abandoned by Judge Quint and 
ins immediate associates. I thought then that it was 
too late for me to do any effective work with a meeting 
of my own summoning; as indeed it was. 

If a mass meeting had been held in San Francisco at 
the date to which I first refer in this connection, I am 
firmly of the opinion Tilden would have been inaugu- 
rated. The Associated Press could not have altogether 
concealed the largeness and importance and emphasis of 
the meeting ; knowing that private dispatches and pri- 
vate letters would bear the text of the resolutions to 
Indiana, and New York and elsewhere ; knowing that 
similar meetings would follow in Sacramento, and San 
Jose, and Marysville, and Los Angeles, and Virginia 
City, and Portland, Oregon, on this coast. We could 
have broken up this " O hush !" business. 

We should have had an investigation into the elec- 
tion last fall in New York and Indiana. At least, we 
should have had a searching investigation. Such an in- 
vestigation was started, and the " O hush !" business of 
the monopolists again brought to bear. The hands and 
hearts of our brethren in Indiana and New York should 
have been strengthened for the purposes of such an in- 
vestigation, by the expressed sentiment of great public 
meetings in San Francisco and elsewhere. I proposed 
to call such a meeting myself a few days after the last 
Presidential election . I very respectfully gave the State 
Central Committee the option of calling such a meet- 
ing ; and after hearing my statement with respect to it, 
the Committee agreed, and went so far as to engage 
Union Hall, music, etc., for the occasion. 

1 will tell you some other time precisely how I under- 
stand the State Committee to have been brought under 
the pressure of the " O, hush!" business. It is sufficient 
for me now to say, that that committee was induced to 
reconsider this appointment. 



SOME ODDS AND ENDS OF PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE. 



15 



You can rely upon it, that hereafter I shall hold my 
own camp meeting, without consultation with any of 
the ciders in California. 

I believe that it may be truly said, that but for the 
action of the railroad monopoly lawyers and office- 
holders in California, in 1876-77, as above noted we 
would have had a mass-meeting in San Francisco, the 
positive and reflex influence of which would have re- 
sulted in the inauguration of Samuel J. Tilden as 
Prssident of the United States. Honest and valiant 
Democrats must act as their best judgment dictates 
hereafter, when committees and pompous offl 
ers refuse to act, in the matter of calling the Democ- 
racy together in public assemblages. 



In Great Britain the country newspapers have their 
latest telegraphic dispatches of news, the same as the 
city dailies, including the very latest market quotations, 
at the rate Of three words for a cent, and less. With a 
Postal Telegraph our Democratic country papers on the 
Pacific coast would have similar facilities for news. 
There never was a more audacious attempt to 
the people and to enlist the country newspapers on 
this coast on the side of monopoly than that noted 
in Jim Simonton's recent lecture, so-called, at the 
.Mercantile Library Hall, in San Francisco; when he 
atfeeted to snivel' over the loss, the deprivation, to 
country newspapers in the event of the establishment 
of a Postal Telegraph. A very sublimity of men- 
dacity ! 



As an indication of the popular use of the Postal Tel- 
egraph, consider how the demand for Postal Cards has 
risen from 100,000 a year to 40,000,000 a quarter, and 
the demand still rising. 



The railroad and telegraph bosses and runners in this 
State have adopted a new plan for hushing up the 
editors of Democratic country newspapers— a new plan 
for inducing such men, when they cannot be bril ed, to 
cease from troubling the public with information about 
and comments upon monopoly, extortion, etc. Even 
some of the bosses condescend to this work. It shows 
how mightily they fear popular enlightement on the 
subject, and" how their grasping avarice go i Is them on 
to industrious deviltry. Bosses and runners go into 
the country and form the acquaintance of ran 
or miners, or improve such an acquaintance already 
formed, for the purpose of suggesting to the aforesaid 
ranchmen or miners— or merchants, perhaps— that Mr. 

So-and-so, editor of the : — is devoting too much 

space to complaints about railroad and telegraph ex- 
tortions. The original suggestion may or may not go 
to the extent of advising the fanner, or miner, or 
merchant, or viniculturist, or mechanic, to go 
to the editor whose paper he subscribes for, or other- 
wise patronizes, and deprecate "so much talk about 
monopolies." If the countrj newspaper patron referred 
to takes the cue quick, ar.d, in his simplicity, a 
once: " Yes, yes; I will go and speak to him about it,' 
then'nothinjf more nerd be said by the boss, or runner, 
or striker, or flunky of the railroad or tel 
pany If the country subscriber gives no hin 
pose of remonstrating with his countrj editor, as de- 
sired he is artfully and explicitly prompted 1 

the whole message being verj polite, except in cases 
of contumacious citizens in the interior, upon whom 
the boss or his agent can Dring the pressure oi 
charges or depot pn kind 

g me of the hest men in the editorial chairs oi Dem- 
ocratic country papers, who havi i i to speak 
out plainly about the enormitit - of monopoly - 
have told me that they have bei n show< i 
of the kind which the above paragraph •-.■ u 
not suspecting, fet first, thai 
behind their good, honest old p 
that wheatnnan or ore-sell 
when he wrote- " I know that the man 
railroad and telegraph is outl iate, but 
I would not say so much about it, if I were you. 



Yes; I knew Senator Broderick intimately. I was 
n his rooms when Calhoun Benham brought 
the Terry challenge. One other person was there Ken 
Butli r's brother. Broderick was eating bis breakfast in 
his bedroom when Ben in. I said at onco, as 

I had said i rick certainlj ought 

I tii.u if Edmund Randolph was 
one of tin' s mator's friends, a duel would be 
; M oided . Bro I I I hat I should call Mr. Ran-; 

Iph was not in bis office at 
. and I did not find him at his home on Tele- 
omunicate with him 
butler had per uaded Broderick to call in other an 1 less 
It is ludicrous to 
read eulogies on Broderick, which are put 
forth for the purpose of making capital politically, by 
nemies of Broderick in his life-time, or 
acquaintance with him such as 
they now profess. I heard one of the railroad coin- 
ring a borrowed eulogj on Brod- 
erick as his own ndingtohave had a close ac- 
ul] knowledge of his 
biography, when, in point of fact, he did not know 
I his railroad orator then spoke 
of Daniel C. Broderick. This eulogist was a State Sen- 
i announced himself as \V. W Stow's favorite 
atie" and "Wofkingmen's" candidate for Con- 
i h, made on the foUowing day, 
this same fellow denounced the railroad monopoly; ft 
ick, to witness the gullibility 
ublic, when such bilks— not only without char- 
acter but reallj dueation are chosen as re- 
form candidates to a State Senate. It is from such crea- 
tures that you may expect sham Postal Telegraph reso- 
lutions. I have heard that some of them returned from 
with carpet sacks full of stationery and 
itlery. Said to be great friends of Denis Kear- 

ld wandering political parsons. * * 

any of the speeches made in Congress and other 
m by "outsiders," as you 
i ;:l \ e supposed. I was told by a CongP ssman in Wash- 
ington, in 1875, that he saw the manuscript of one of 
John P. Jones' silver speeches before Jones himself saw 
it! We have membeisot our State Senate who are en- 
tirely ignorant of the rules of grammar, and who have 
not written a letter fo ral rears on that account. 

Yet they talk very 1 tetimes; very pomp- 

: inf *m id that one of this 
i \-. hich i delivered in Sacramento, 
, . and read it as his own at a St. 
in this state iii L872. 1 learned 
of this fa i inquired of me how 1 

could so exai How referred to 

iii n, four or live \ ears in ad- 
Xo; Broderick did not leave 
lent probated as such was a forg- 
ery, i ip i ' ■ ■■ era! times during the cam- 
I no will written or recorded 
limself by writ- 
hortly bi tore the Smith duel; 
ifornia could have his property, if 
killed. The "water warfare" in 
n a humbug from the beginning, 
so far as t he iii i ned. The pets 

oid Call have made the most 

died, agrei d to "fight" the 

courts for Bve thousand dollars, 

hundred and ninety. nine 

its more than he was worth 

tie was ultimately paid twenty-five thou- 

md dollars for his services in behalf 

of t ie Spring Va Ii •> Water Coin- 

n hich in 
: h ith Btealin . I rem 
th an i chortation to 

be happy. The whole hu.--ine.ss 
Sting shame; but it 

iypo ites ol the BuUi - 

The 

co hasbi in the curse 

With varied 
it sufficient to a — nine 

ab 
. regularly. * 
just any intclli- 



SOME ODD? AND ENDS OF PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE. 



gent, thinking man, to see a paper that has a direct and 
avowed interest in company with the telegraph monopo- 
lists, professing sincere hostility to our water and gas 
moparchs. If we had a postal telegraph, men of brains 
and common honesty would immediately have such 
equal opportunities and advantages in the way of get- 
in-- telegraphic news that they could successfully start 
and continue the publication of daily journals that 
would weed out the Pharisaic and the avowed Judas or- 
gans of San Francisco. Bear that in mind. * 
San Francisco would have double her present population 
and wealth— with prosperity as evenly divided as anv of 
our most favored Eastern cities— if San Francisco had 
not been cursed by the most infamous Independent 
Press that ever afflicted any community. 



Yes; that is one of their stereotyped forms in which 
they slander the rest of mankind : " Anyone else would 
do the same thing under the same circumstances." Not 
so. Some have endured martyrdom for the truth and 
honor; why not expect many' to resist the utmost of 
temptation or intimidation from the source indicated? 

If Tilden had accepted the Presidential office under 
the same terms and circumstances as those marked for 
Hayes— or anywise similar terms and circumstances — 
would not you and I have denounced him for his ve- 
nality ? I know I would. I am thankful that I am ac- 
quainted with some old line Piepublicans who openly de- 
nounced the hypocrite, Hayes, for taking the stolen 
property passed to him by John Sherman, J as. A. Gar- 
field & Co.; and who thereupon gave assurance of their 
entire sincerity, by quitting the Radical camp. 



It is true that many a man has conducted a great 
business with a just and even generous consideration of 
his responsibility to the people in his immediate employ 
and to the community generally, and to the government 
of his country. These dominating money "bags of to- 
day do most grossly libel their fellow men when they 
declare, and have proclaimed for them, that any othe'r 
person or persons would be as selfish and extortionate 
and corrupt as they are in a like position. 

Jim Fisk, with all his manv and well-known vices 
was an incomparably better man than any of his com- 
panions or successors in monopoly power. They have 
all his faults with none of his good qualities, in their 
business operations. He exhibited many redeeming 
traits of character, which are entirely foreign to the 
composition or self-culture of the railroad or telegraph 
bosses who are now on the throne. 



Railroad Commissioner Cone goes directly to Stanford 
for counsel as to the action of the Commissioners. He 
is honest about this. He states such is his habit. So 
stated to Judge Hewel, of Modesto. Nice Railroad 
Commissioners for the people ! It is a little refreshing 
though, to note that he does not lie about his service, 
and pretend that he has no communications with the 
railroad dukes, or their lawyers, or lacqueys. For what 
small things do we become grateful. 

If the railroad and telegraph graspers did not charge 
extortionat* l.v they would have no occasion to debauch 
teipslators and other public representatives or officers. 
Iheyrobyou by extortionate freights and fares, an 1 
then, out of their robber's fund, they buy the election 
of legislators and judges; or bribe representatives and 
courts, fitter the legislature and the tribunal of justice 
has been opened. 



rhe article in the July Scribner (1881), headed "The 
Peoples Problem," is monopoly-defending in its ulti- 
mate and general effect. It belongs to a class of articles 
which the lawyers and lick-spittles of the great railroad 
ana telegraph corporations write for the leading maga- 
zines, whose editors and managers are, from ignorance or 
collusion, ready for -their insertion. This article-de- 
scrioes politicians as plundering Jav Gould, and Jim 
Simonlon, and Cornelius Vanderbilt and Leland Stan- 



ford." That is the drift and bent of the article ; and, in 
some parts, this statement and challenge is direct ; al- 
though, of course— of course— of course- there are the 
usual (most inconsistent) paragraphs deprecating mo- 
nopoly. The monopolists sometimes pay directly for 
just such people-libeling, hoodwinking, bamboozling 
articles ; and the authors of such will frequently be 
found gnzzling at the dinner-tables of the railroad and 
telegraph company magnates. 

The people are more than willing— they are anxious 
—that all legitimate and fairly conducted business en- 
terprises shall return large profits to proprietors and 
managers. This statement, in the simplicities, con- 
fronts, and, if held in contemplation for a moment, will 
confound the maudlin magazine flunki s of New York 
and California. 



Exasperated, sometimes, even by the shadow of pro- 
test against their exactions — though the protest be made 
where it cannot avail — the real temper and sentiment of 
our railroad orphans crop out. A few days ago, Stan- 
ford said, at a meeting of the California Railroad Com- 
missioners, that no one was opposed to or aggrieved 
by the railroad management in this State, except 
" bumming politicians, who spend most of their working 
hours with their feet up on a table, etc." Now, there^ 
spoke Leland Stanford: This " gentleman," this "prince 
of entertainers" — whose biography, as a beauty, is stuck 
under the nose of every reader in this State in a dozen 
different prints almost every month in the year. This 
is the way he classes you — honest man and decent citi- 
zen, merchant, artisan, or toiler in a profession— if you 
presume to complain of the extortions and the corrupt 
practices in businessand in politics of the Central Pacific 
Railroad Company. 

Now, if Leland" Stanford will point out one " hum- 
ming politician" in this State, who is not now, or who 
has not been, as occasion called, a servant of the C. P. 
R. R., he will gratify a laudable and wide-spread 
curiosity. I undertake' to say that every morally, rotten 
creature in the form of a man, who makes a business of 
bargaining his vote or influence in polities— living a life 
of comparative idleness in every other respect— is a hire- 
ling of the Central Pacific Railroad Company. And no 
one has better reason to know that fact than Leland 
Stanford. 

I would like to see the people roused up to a full sense 
and appreciation of the character of our monopoly ty- 
rants. Here is an illustration of it. They hate every 
one who is opposed to their outrageous management, 
and who expresses that opposition in sincerity and for 
the purpose of stimulating reform disposition and move- 
ment against them— whose honest opposition they 
know and feel to be true and intelligent and influen- 
tial and effective. 

What a foul slander is this quoted statement, coming 
from the blubbery lips oX this purse-proud, arrogant 
Railroad President — a lordly millionaire in ownerships 
of railroads which were built with the money of the 
people. Yet Scribner's and Harper's managers, and 
Kearney and Fitch and Pickering and Pixiey — from 
the top to the bottom of the scale of influence and " re- 
spectability"— will join in unstintedly praising such 
men, and by every means in their power helping such 
men to continue to bear extorting and tyrannical rule in 
this " Land of the free and home of the brave." 



It is an everlasting shame that the people of this State 
should be held by the throat by a Board of Railroad and 
Telegraph Directors, in conjunction with the directors 
of local monopolies in San Francisco, a majority of 
whom are so ignorant that they buy their pictures by 
the yard, and their statuary by* the ton — or were accus- 
tomed to do so until some of them took friendly advice 
and purchased through competent agents. There may 
be something of added exasperation in the gross ignor- 
rance of these men. But that is a very little matter, 
and you should not dwell upon it. 



Their petty spitefulness is illustrated by their ignoring 
Modesto in their folder maps, which are supposed to 
give accurate and full namings of important stations, 



SOME ODDS AND ENDS OF PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE. 



IT 



etc. si mi ilaus County seems to be irreolaimablj Dem- 

..:! i Modesto is the shire town thereof. H 
although a place of 3,000 inhabitants, it; name is not 
given on Crocker's travelers' map ;— although 
profile of the railroad contains scores of names of little 
hamlets along the road. What sweet revenge on Mo- 
ni.l Stanislaus County. Fully indicative of the 
length and breath and heighth and depth of the brains 
and souls of theCrockers and Stanfords & Co. 
The Modesto people pay •-, for a round ticket to San 
Francisco and back. I know of many roads in the 
East, who for a greater distance, for 140 miles, sell 
round tickets for 82 50. And that on roads built with 
private funds, of course. The railroad magnates 
charge at least twice as much as they should ; and the 
Modesto people know it and feel it, and talk about it. 

Yes. I suppose you may say that some of these 
monopolists are sensitive about having any one speak of 
them personally. In general discursive phrases—such 
as thej give their shams to use, when they put them up 
to bamboozle the people with anti-monopoly affecta- 
tions— they do not find much annoyance ; but when a 
man of the people speaks of them with any appropriate 
individual, personal reference, they are very wrathy. 
It is too much the prophecy of time when the Lord of all, 
whose is the silver and the gold, shall single them out 
and denounce them for their perjuries and robberies 
and oppressions and rascalities of every sort. 

They establish and hire slander and smut mills all over 
this State, and all over the Union, to blacken the char- 
acter of decent men and outspoken politicians, whom 
they know they cannot corrupt ; and they sometimes 
direct their Sptrit of the Times, or News Letter, or Ar- 
gonaut, or Daily Chronicle, to begin firing;— whenever, 
by incorruptible patriots, the dukes of monopoly in 
California are challenged ami exposed and denounced. 
If deemed absolutely necessary, the Bulletin will also be 
ordered up to this work. They hide themselves behind 
low mud-batteries, and grin alK ' giggle while their scav- 
engers conic up from their cess-pools under the em- 
brazures and east mire in the face of the sincere cham- 
pions of human liberty, who know and denounce and 
battle the greatest living and aetiug foes of Republican 
institutions and popular rights. 



Talk about shame! Witness the shouting over the al- 
leged Morey letter, and then note the substituting of the 
name of Charles Francis Adams Jr. for that of Charles 
Francis Adams, — pretending, as the Chronicle and other 
rotten Radical organs did, that Charles Francis Adams 
stultified himself with respect to his own grand charge 
of ineffaceable fraud against the Republican Party; tak- 
ing the words of his runt son (a stipendiary of the rail- 
road monopolists,) and putting them into the mouth of 
the venerable and venerated father. Talk of the Morey 
letter ? See the forged report from the free-trade 
League,— ascribing to it an endorsement of the Demo- 
cratic Party, when it never made any such endorse- 
ment ; when its officers never dreamed of any such 
thing. 

The Morey letter never made a vote against Garfield . 
The men on* this coast who had made up their minds to 
vote the Democratic ti.-ket at the last Presidential elec- 
tion, on the basis of the Chinese question, had come to 
that conclusion long before the Morey letter made its 
appearance. I believe that if it changed any votes at 
all, it changed them the other way. When it first made 
its appearance, 1 did not believe it. The words " Per- 
sonal and Confidential," which were written over it, 
made me discredit it, and I never made any use of it. 
I never spoke of it in public, nor did I ever say anything 
about it in private, except to pass the common remark 
that it was less emphatic as indicating Garfield's senti- 
ment on the Chinese question than his action in Con- 
gress or his Cleveland interview. It bore no compari- 
son— even supposing it to have been a forgery— to the 
Radical iniquity of the Charles Francis Adams false- 
hood and the free-trade League forgery ; andthese lat- 
ter, though proven beyond a question against the 
managers of the Radical Party of 1881, have never been 
retracted or apologized for by any Radical or Independ- 
ent paper not even by the much bepuffed saints,<}eorge 
W. Curtis and Carl Schurz. 



Themerchants and the farmers of California should 
i market rates in New York and 
Liverpool, within shortest telegraphic dispatch time, for 
twenty-five ci nl - For each ten words. With 

the tariff would run from this cost down to 
one-quarter the figure named. As it is now, the mana- 
gers of the telegraph monopoly own, for all practical 
purposes, the market newB of the world. Every mer- 
chant and farmer in California should be abli 
latest Liverpool quotations for wool and otherstaples 
in half a day's time, for a quarter of a dollar. See my 
lecture on Postal Telegraph. 



It is rumored that some of the monopolists in New 
York City are about organizing a telegraph company, 
which is to he called "The Postal Telegraph Company." 
Here, by the way, is a confession as to the growing popu- 
larity Of the name and that which it stands for. It 
would seem that the name " People's Telegraph Com- 
pany "has been worn OUt- as a delusive title. lean 
count sixteen "People's" Telegraph Companies that 
have risen with great threats against monopoly and 
suddenly sold out. The charges of the Western Union 
Tdegraph Company arc so enormously extortionate 
that genuine competition will frequently spring up be- 
tween main points. But one of the principal tricks of 
the telegraph monopoly nowadays is to get up sham 
"competing" companies and go through the motions 
of fighting "it for a year or so. Then there will 1m- a 
pretense of buying' out the new concern. In this way 
real, honest competition is warded off; outside capital- 
ists and the people being made to believe that compc ti- 
tion does exist or is about to be permanently established. 
And, at the same time, here is a cunning device for ci >\ er- 
ing another immense watering of stock. When the 
"new 7 concern," so-called, is bought in, or professedly 
purchased, there is an inflation of stock which is out of 
all proportion to the actual cost of the additional V 
that are now avowedly taken under Western Union 
management. The general public has been completely 
hoodwinked by this maneuvre several times. Willi this 
watered stock* some of the independent press managers 
have been largely enriched— in payment lor special ser- 
vices as suppressors and misreprescnters and wholesale 
and retail liars on behalf of the Western Union Tele- 
graph monopoly. 

Be not deceived. A National Government Postal Tele- 
graph is what we need. Any other establishment will 
fail to bring the people speedy,, adequate and enduring 
relief from extortionate telegra] h tolls; anything other 
than this will fail to afford us the benefits and advant- 
ages of telegraphy, which it is the right of the people to 
have and to enjoy. 

The real monopoly proprietorship in the New York 
Nation is now sufficiently disclosed, when we 9 
editor lock arms with Carl Shurz in th ent of 

the New York Evening Post a paper now avowedly 
the flunky organ of the Northern Pacific Railroad 
monopoly. 

Time was when these monopolists seemed a little more 
shrewd, or at least more secret about their newspaper 
proprietorship. Thej disclaimed a monopoly manage- 
ment, after the fashion of our own delectable /■.'■■■ 
Bulletin, and Morning Call, and San Francisco Chroni- 
cle. But here we have the grand old New Voir Even- 
ing Post,- that journal of splendid record, with its Leg- 
get and its William Cullen Bryant and its Park Cod- 
win and its John Bigelow, on the editorial list! Now 
we see it with thai soldier of fortune, Carl Schurz, 
spindled on its tripod; with the I 

hvpo i i ; and ehattterin . ar >und him. 

Yes ; it was bad enough to see the New York World 
pass from Manton M irbli lould's 

• and avowed proprietorship. Hut the humi 

in th.i i- far less than that whic 

observingth d i hery in the oflice of the New York 
i Post . 



I began the ad • N itional Po 

in 1851, when I had charge of a jur at North 

Adams, Massachusetts. I was then a lad of fifteen 
years. At that time I had not seen or heard of the re- 



18 



SOME ODDS AND ENDS OF PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE. 



r General on the nib- 
.■ had n I ben been 
I irope. The proposition 
I i ■'• '.-i. [pr i it oc- 
curred b inarm :l 
the M "■ 
I is laughed at and ridi- 
ibi iut sending all 1< 
per , and in such me1 1 
c rresp mdenc i 
Presently I learned that a Demo- 
prehended 
f, and I then begun writing to Cabinet 
esentatiyes in reference to 
r. [See mj lecture on Postal Telegraph, ap- 
racts from President Polk's Postmaster 
3 Report.] From that time on I was embold-- 
I to press the subject; really and 
aanifest are the ad 
' hi it are the extortions and imposi- 
'i us kinds, of the tyrants of telegraph mo- 
nopoly— that e ' ir would witness the 
•an Postal Telegraph. 
I have i bills to many United 
I Represent: tives in Congress, on 
their agn ■ md advocate such a meas- 
ue have been introduced and referred and 
urged; some have been offered and allowed to sleep 
in the committee room Two or three of the 
ivn— leading, in fact — tlunkies of the monopo- 
Legislature, recognizing the impor- 
nd probable ultimate adoption of such a meas- 
ure, has >rd by introducing a 
of their own. A. A. Sargent, for instance. 
Distinj i S n itors and Representatives have 
red me many times that they would offer 
or of such a measure 
.died to 
1 .1 Know that such 
them— have, indulged in favoring talk 
about thi d cloak rooms at the 
National Ca] I rsation; anil i know 
that tlie: li maries of the Western 
Union ! have been very active in 
buzzing ' "argu- 
md rising from lying state- 
British and Continental Telegraphs, 
er, as 1 go from poin 
n the extortions, tyrannies 
• lies ot the Western Union Telegraph monopo- 
ly ! 1 >i ■ ■ i ms of information and 
inent on the subject by our venal press, 
nl to realize the enormity of the 
in political and 
the outrage in the falsity or 
. emeudous over- 
irvices actually rendered! Do ti 
all your acquaintances on this si 
us see if wee;- ational Government Postal 
Telegraph during the next Administrati 
ctfully, 

LES A. SUMNER. 
San Francisco, July l, 1881. 



STSCRIPT. 

Since the foregoing was written and put in the hands 
of the printer, an assassin has shot James A. Garfield. 
cent citizen must feel a heartfelt sorrow for 
.Mr. Garfield and for his family, on account of this das- 
tardly deed. Why shoot James A. Garfield ? I did not 
suppose he had a personal enemy in this whole country. 
He was not and is not the man to make personal ene- 
mies. Ik is one of ' b >se men who started out in life with 
a pleasant disposition, and who has educated his amia- 
bility to the utmost. There is a profoundly wise sel- 
fishness in this. James A. Garfield always sought not 
to hurt anybody's personal feelings. And certainly no 
citizen of good sense could desire to substitute Arthur 
for Garfield in the Executive Mansion. 

I will express gratitude because it was not a lunatic 
from the South who committed this horrible act. If it 
had been, it would have made capital sufficient for the 
prolongation of Radical rule at Washington during the 
next ten years to come, at the very least; although it 
might have been established bej 7 ond the shadow of a 
shade of a reasonable doubt that no other human being in 
the South or on the face of the earth had the slightest 
fixed-star-distant thought or suspicion of the deed be- 
fore it was done. 

Now Garfield is to recover. Good. I am heartily 
glad of it. But is he less the man who went down to 
Louisiana and help steal the Presidency from that in- 
comparably noble statesman, that splendid patriot, 
Samuel J. Tilden ? 

I know that every possible use will be made of this 
unfortunate occurrence to build this man Garfield up in 
popularity, and continue his administration over an- 
other term. Rut, unless the people lose their wits in a 
sympathy pushed beyond the proper bounds of personal 
pity, it will not be a success. 

lorry, sorry, sorry, that James A. Garfield was 
struck down by the bullet of the cowardly Guiteau. 1 
am glad that James A. Garfield is recovering, and I 
hope he will live out his term, ami as much longer as 
the laws of nature will permit him to live. Rut i pro- 
test against popular forgetfulness of public life and 
character on his accounl because of this murderous act. 

See how the masters behind the Presidential chair un- 
cover themselves to-day! Jay Gould and G. P. Hunting- 
ton. J. M. Green and Gyrus J. Field and William H. 
Vanderbilt come forward to make up a purse of a quar- 
ter of a million for Mr. James A. Garfield. You may- 
say that they ought to do it? As Thomas A. Hendricks 
asserted and demonstrated, he, James A. Garfield — above 
- was instrumental in carrying out 
the plans of Chandler and John Sherman (who were 
then more immediately the servants of the monopolists) 
for defrauding the peopli out of their rightfully-elected 
Executive, Samuel J. Tilden. 

And th ht never to forget, but ought ever 

to be reminded of the fact, That if Samuel J. Tilden had 

been allowed to take the Presidential chair to which he 

mesty in public affairs and of 

justice ■ na't 'ation, as against n i 

f, would Inn. ted and. 

established in thexc United States of America! 



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